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ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



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ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



BY 



CHARLES LAMB 



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A NEW EDITION 




BOSTON: 
CROSBY, NICHOLS, LEE AND COMPANY. 

117 WASHINGTON STREET. 
1860. 




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RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE : 

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED B\ 

H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY 



NOV 2y iW 



^ CONTENTS. 



» — • — 

^ ELIA. 

' PAGE 

» j5 ^^^ SOUTH-SEA HOUSE 9 

^ |OXFORD IN THE VACATION 19 

• "l^ f CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO . .27 

THE TWO RACES OF MEN 44 

new-year's eve ' 51 

jpHRS. battle's OPINIONS ON WHIST .... 60 

J^ CHAPTER ON EARS 69 

ALL fools' day 75 

a quakers' meeting . 80 

the old and the new schoolmaster . . .86 

imperfect sympathies 98 

Switches, and other night fears . . . .108 
7 valentine's day 117 

*4lY RELATIONS 121 

-fXalACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE . . . . . 129 

MY FIRST PLAY 136 

MODERN GALLANTRY 142 

ATHE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE . . 147 



vi CONTENTS. 

PAGK 
idGlRACE BEFORE MEAT 162 



^, 



ream-children; a revert ) 171 



H 



/193 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS . . . . . . /l76 

/ / 

THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS I , , . ^184 

A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS IN THE ME- 
TROPOLIS 

[A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG .... 203 
A bachelor's COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOR OF MAR- 
RIED PEOPLE .212 

ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS 221 

ON THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY . 237 
ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN 247 



THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



/ 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE 257 

POOR RELATIONS 264 

DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING . . 273 

STAGE ILLUSION 281 

TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON 285 

ELLISTONIANA ........ 289 

THE OLD MARGATS HOY : . 296 

THE CONVALESCENT . 306 

SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS 312 

CAPTAIN JACKSON . . 316 



CONTENTS. vii 

PAQE 
THE SUPERANNUATED MAN 322 

THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITLNG -, , , . 331 

BARBARA S 337 

^ THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY 344 

AMICUS REDIVIVUS . . 348 

SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY . . . 354 

NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO . . . .363 

BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN THE 

PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART . . . .373 

THE WEDDING 388 

REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE 395 

OLD CHINA 402 

THE CHILD-ANGEL ; A DREAM 410 

CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD 414 



POPULAR FALLACIES — 

I. THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD . . 425 

II. THAT ILL-GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PROSPERS . . 426 

III. THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS OWN JEST 427 

IV. THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDING — THAT 

IT IS EASY TO PERCEIVE HE IS NO GENTLEMAN 427 

V. THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF THE RICH . 428 

VI. THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST . . 430 
VII. OF TWO DISPUTANTS THE WARMEST IS GENERALLY 

IN THE WRONG . . . . . • .431 

VIII. THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT AVIT, BECAUSE 

THEY WILL NOT BEAR A TRANSLATION . . 433 

IX. THAI THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST . . . 433 



viii CONTENTS. 

POPULAR FALLACIES — (^Continued) page 

X. THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES . . 436 

XI. THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT-HORSE IN THE 

MOUTH 439 

XII. THAT HOME IS HOME, THOUGH IT IS NEVER SO 

HOMELY . 442 

XIII. THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME, AND LOVE MY DOG . 448 

XIV. THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK . .452 
XV. THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB . 455 

XVI. THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE . . 458 



ELIA. 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 

Reader, in tliy passage from tlie Bank — where 
thon hast been receiving thy half-yearly dividends 
(supposing thou art a lean annuitant like myself) — 
to the Flower Pot, to secure a place for Dalston, or 
Shacklewell, or some other thy suburban retreat north- 
erly, — didst thou never observe a melancholy-looking, 
handsome, brick and stone edifice, to the left — where 
Threadneedle-street abuts upon Bishopsgate ? I dare 
say thou hast often admired its magnificent portals ever 
gaping wide, and disclosing to view a grave court, with 
cloisters, and pillars, with few or no traces of goers- 
in or comers-out, — a desolation something like Bal- 
clutha's.* 

This was once a house of trade, — a centre of busy 
interests. The throng of merchants was here — the 
quick pulse of gain — and here some forms of business 
are still kept up, though the soul be long since fled. 
Here are still to be seen stately porticos ; imposing 
staircases, offices roomy as the state apartments in 
palaces — deserted, or thinly peopled with a few strag- 

* I passed by the walls of Balclutha, and they were desolate. 

OSSIAN. 



10 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 

gling clerks ; the still more sacred interiors of court 
and committee-rooms, with venerable faces of beadles, 
door-keepers — directors seated in form on solemn days 
(to proclaim a dead dividend), at long worm-eaten 
tables, that have been mahogany, with tarnished gilt- 
leather coverings, supporting massy silver inkstands 
long since dry ; — the oaken wainscots hung with 
pictures of deceased governors and sub-governors, of 
Queen Anne, and the two first monarchs of the 
Brunswick dynasty; — huge charts, which subsequent 
discoveries have antiquated ; dusty maps of Mexico, 
dim as dreams, — and soundings of the Bay of Panama ! 
The long passages hung with buckets, appended, in 
idle row, to walls, whose substance might defy any, 
short of the last, conflagration : — with vast ranges of 
cellarage under all, where dollars and pieces-of-eight 
once lay, an " unsunned heap," for Mammon to have 
solaced his solitary heart withal, — long since dissi- 
pated, or scattered into air at the blast of the breaking 

of that famous Bubble. 

Such is the South-Sea House. At least, such it 
was forty years ago, when I knew it, — a magnificent 
relic ! What alterations may have been made in it 
since, I have had no opportunities of verifying. Time, 
I take for granted, has not freshened it. No wind 
has resuscitated the face of the sleeping waters. A 
thicker crust by this time stagnates upon it. The 
moths that were then battening upon its obsolete 
ledgers and daybooks, have rested fi:'om their depre- 
dations, but other light generations have succeeded, 
making fine fretwork among their single and double 
entries. Layers of dust have accumulated (a super- 
foetation of dirt !) upon the old layers, that seldom 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 11^ 

used to be disturbed, save by some curious finger, no\v 
and tlien, inquisitive to explore the mode of bookkeep- 
ing in Queen Anne's reign ; or, with less hallowed 
curiosity, seeking to unveil some of the mysteries of 
that tremendous hoax, whose extent the petty pecula- 
tors of our day look back upon with the same expres- 
sion of incredulous admiration, and ho]:)eless ambition 
of rivalry, as would become the puny face of modem 
conspiracy contemplating the Titan size of Vaux's 
superhuman plot. 

Peace to the manes of the Bubble ! Silence and 
destitution are upon thy walls, proud house, for a me- 
morial ! 

Situated as thou art, in the very heart of stirring 
and living commerce, — amid the fret and fever of 
speculation, — with the Bank, and the 'Change, and 
the India-House about thee, in the heyday of present 
prosperity, with their important faces, as it were, in- 
sulting thee, their poor neighhor out of business, — to 
the idle and merely contemplative, — to such as me, 
old house ! there is a charm in thy quiet : — a cessa- 
tion — a coolness from business — an indolence almost 
cloistral — which is delightful ! With what reverence 
have I paced thy great bare rooms and courts at even- 
tide ! They spoke of the past : — the shade of some 
dead accountant, with visionary pen in ear, would flit 
by me, stiff as in life. Living accounts and account- 
ants puzzle me. I have no skill in figuring. But thy 
great dead tomes, which scarce three degenerate clerks 
of the present day could lift from their enshrining 
shelves — with their old fantastic flourishes, and dec- 
orative rubric interlacings — their sums in triple col- 
umniations, set down with formal superfluity of ciphers 



12 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 

— - with pious sentences at the beginning, without which 
our reHgious ancestors never ventured to open a book 
of business, or bill of lading — the costly vellum covers 
of some of them almost persuading us that we are 
got into some better library^ — are very agreeable and 
edifying spectacles. I can look upon these deftmct 
dragons with complacency. Thy heavy, odd-shaped, 
ivory-handled penknives (our ancestors had every- 
thing on a larger scale than we have hearts for) are as 
good as anything from Herculaneum. The pounce- 
boxes of our days have gone retrograde. 

The very clerks which I remember in the South-Sea 
House — I speak of forty years back — had an air very 
different from those in the public offices that I have 
had to do with since. They partook of the genius of 
the place ! 

They were mostly (for the establishment did not 
admit of superfluous salaries) bachelors. Generally 
(for they had not much to do) persons of a curious 
and speculative turn of mind. Old-fashioned, for a 
reason mentioned before. Humorists, for they were 
of all descriptions ; and, not having been brought to- 
gether in early life (which has a tendency to assimi- 
late the members of corporate bodies to each other), 
but, for the most part, placed in this house in ripe or 
middle age, they necessarily carried into it their sepa- 
rate habits and oddities, unqualified, if I may so speak, 
as into a common stock. Hence they formed a sort of 
Noah's ark. Odd fishes. A lay-monastery. Domestic 
retainers in a great house, kept more for show than 
use. Yet pleasant fellows, full of chat, — and not a 
few among them had arrived at considerable profi- 
ciency on the German flute. 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 13 

The cashier at that time was one Evans, a Cambro 
Briton. He had something of the choleric complexion 
of his countrymen stamped on his visage, but was a 
worthy sensible man at bottom. He wore his hair, 
to the last, powdered and frizzed out, in the fashion 
which I remember to have seen in caricatures of what 
were termed, in my young days, Maccaronies. He 
was the last of that race of beaux. Melancholy as a 
gibcat, over his counter all the forenoon, I think I see 
him, makmg up his cash (as they call it) with tremu- 
lous fingers, as if he feared every one about him was a 
defaulter; in his hypochondry ready to imagine him- 
self one ; haunted, at least, with the idea of the possi- 
bility of his becoming one ; his tristful visage clearing 
up a little over his roast neck of veal at Anderton's at 
two (where his picture still hangs, taken a Httle before 
his death by desire of the master of the coffee-house, 
which he had frequented for the last five-and-twenty 
years,) but not attaining the meridian of its animation 
till evening brought on the hour of tea and visiting. 
The simultaneous sound of his well-known rap at the 
door with the stroke of the clock announcing six, was a 
topic of never-failing mirth in the families which this 
dear old bachelor gladdened with his presence. Then 
was his forte^ his glorified hour ! How would he chirp, 
and expand, over a muffin ! How would he dilate into 
secret history. His countryman, Pennant himself, in 
particular, could not be more eloquent than he in rela- 
tion to old and new London — the site of old theatres, 
churches, streets gone to decay — where Rosamond's 
Pond stood — the Mulberry-gardens — and the Con- 
duit in Cheap — with many a pleasant anecdote, de- 
rived from paternal tradition, of those grotesque figures 



14 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 

which Hogarth has immortalized in his picture of Noon^ 
— the worthy descendants of those heroic confessors, 
who, flying to this country, from the wrath of Louis 
the Fourteenth and his dragoons, kept alive the flame 
of pure religion in the sheltering obscurities of Hog- 
lane, and the vicinity of the Seven Dials ! 

Deputy, under Evans, was Thomas Tame. He had 
the air and stoop of a nobleman. You would have 
taken him for one, had you met him in one of the 
passages leading to Westminster-hall. By stoop, I 
mean that gentle bending of the body forwards, which, 
in great men, must be supposed to be the effect of an 
habitual condescending attention to the applications of 
their mferiors. While he held you in converse, you 
felt strained to the height in the colloquy. The con- 
ference over, you were at leisure to smile at the com- 
parative insignificance of the pretensions which had 
just awed you. His intellect was of the shallowest 
order. It did not reach to a saw or a proverb. His 
mind was in its original state of white paper. A 
sucking-babe might have posed him. What was it 
then ? Was he rich ? Alas, no ! Thomas Tame 
was very poor. Both he and his wife looked out- 
wardly gentlefolks, when I fear all was not well at all 
times within. She had a neat meagre person, which it 
was evident she had not sinned in over-pampering ; but 
in its veins was noble blood. She traced her descent, 
by some labyrinth of relationship, which I never thor- 
oughly understood, — much less can explain with any 
heraldic certainty at this time of day, — to the illus- 
trious, but unfortunate house of Derwentwater. This 
was the secret of Thomas's stoop. This was the 
thought — the sentiment -^ the bright sohtary star of 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 15 

your lives, — ye mild and tappy pair, — which cheered 
you in the night of intellect, and in the obsciuity of 
your station ! This was to you mstead of riches, in- 
stead of rank, instead of glittering attainments ; and it 
was worth them all together. You insulted none with 
it ; but, while you wore it as a piece of defensive 
armor only, no insult likewise could reach you through 
it. Decus et solamen. " 

Of quite another stamp was the then accountant, 
John Tipp. He neither pretended to high blood, nor, 
in good truth, cared one fig about the matter. He 
" thought an accountant the greatest character in the 
world, and himself the greatest accountant in it." 
Yet John was not without his hobby. The fiddle 
relieved his vacant hours. He sang, certamly, with 
other notes than to the Orphean lyre. He did, in- 
deed, scream and scrape most abominably. His fine 
suite of official rooms in Threadneedle-street, which, 
without anything very substantial appended to them, 
were enough to enlarge a man's notions of himself that 
lived in them, (I know not who is the occupier of them 
now,) resounded fortnightly to the notes of a concert 
of " sweet breasts," as our ancestors would have called 
them, culled from club-rooms and orchestras — chorus- 
singers — first and second violoncellos — double basses 
— and clarionets — who ate his cold mutton and drank 
his punch, and praised his ear. He sate like Lord 
Midas among them. But at the desk Tipp was quite 
another sort of creature. Thence all ideas, that were 
purely ornamental, were banished. You could not 
speak of anything romantic without rebuke. Politics 
were excluded. A newspaper was thought too refined 
and abstracted. The whole duty of man consisted in 



16 THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 

writing off dividend warrants. The striking of the 
annual balance in the company's books (which, per- 
haps, differed from the balance of last year in the sum 
of 251. Is. 66?.) occupied his days and nights for a 
month previous. Not that Tipp was blind to the dead- 
ness of things (as they call them in the city) in his 
beloved house, or did not sigh for a return of the old 
stirring days when South-Sea hopes were young — (he 
was indeed equal to the wielding of any the most in- 
tricate accounts of the most flourishing company in 
these or those days) ; — but to a genuine accountant 
the difference of proceeds is as nothing. The fractional 
farthing is as dea-r to his heart as the thousands which 
stand before it. He is the true actor, who, whether 
his part be a prince or a peasant, must act it with like 
intensity. With Tipp form was everything. His life 
was formal. His actions seemed ruled with a ruler. 
His pen was not less erring than his heart. He made 
the best executor in the world ; he was plagued with 
incessant executorships accordingly, which excited his 
spleen and soothed his vanity in equal ratios. He 
would swear (for Tipp swore) at the little orphans, 
whose rights he would guard with a tenacity like the 
grasp of the dying hand, that commended their interests 
to his protection. With all this there was about him 
a sort of timidity — (his few enemies used to give it a 
worse name) — a something which, in reverence to the 
dead, we will place, if you please, a little on this side 
of the heroic. Nature certamly had been pleased to 
endow John Tipp with . a sufficient measure of the 
principle of self-preservation. There is a cowardice 
which we do not despise, because it has nothing base 
or treacherous in its elements ; it betrays itself, not 



THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. - 17 

you ; it is mere temperament ; the absence of the 
romantic and the enterprising ; it sees a hon in the 
way, and will not, with Fortinbras, " greatly find 
quarrel in a straw," when some supposed honor is at 
stake. Tipp never mounted the box of a stage-coach 
in his life ; or leaned against the rails of a balcony ; 
or walked upon the ridge of a parapet ; or looked down 
a precipice ; or let off a gun ; or went upon a water- 
party ; or would willingly let you go, if he could have 
helped it ; neither was it recorded of him, that for 
lucre, or for intimidation, he ever forsook friend or 
principle. 

Whom next shall we summon from the dusty dead, 
in whom common qualities become imcommon ? Can 
I forget thee, Henry Man, the wit, the polished man 
of letters, the author^ of the South-Sea House ? who 
never enteredst thy office in a morning, or quittedst it 
in mid-day — (what didst thou in an office?) — with- 
out some quirk that left a sting ! Thy gibes and thy 
jokes are now extinct, or survive but in two forgotten 
volumes, which I had the good fortune to rescue from 
a stall in Barbican, not three days ago, and found thee 
terse, fresh, epigrammatic, as alive. Thy wit is a little 
gone by in these fastidious days — thy topics are staled 
by the "new-born gauds" of the time; — but great 
thou used to be in Public Ledgers, and in Chronicles, 
upon Chatham, and Shelburne, and Rockingham, and 
Howe, and Burgoyne, and Clinton, and the war which 
ended in the tearing from Great Britain her rebellious 
colonies, — and Keppel, and Wilkes, and Sawbridge, 
and Bull, and Dunning, and Pratt, and Richmond, — 
and such small politics. 

A little less facetious, and a great deal more obstrep- 



18 . ' THE SOUTH-SEA HOUSE. 

eroTis, was fine rattling, rattle-headed Plumer. He 
was descended, — not in a right line, reader, (for his 
lineal pretensions, like his personal, favored a little of 
the sinister bend,) from the Plnmers of Hertfordshire. 
So tradition gave him out ; and certain family features 
not a little sanctioned the opinion. Certainly old 
Walter Plumer (his reputed author) had been a rake 
in his days, and visited much in Italy, and had seen 
the world. He was uncle, bachelor-uncle, to the fine 
old whig still living, who has represented the county 
in so many successive parliaments, and has a fine old 
mansion near Ware. Walter flourished in George 
the Second's days, and was the same who was sum- 
moned before the House of Commons about a busi- 
ness of franks, with the old Duchess of Marlborough. 
You may read of it in Johnson's " Life of Cave." Cave 
came ofi' cleverly in that business. It is certain our 
Plumer did nothing to discountenance the rumor. 
He rather seemed pleased whenever it was, with all 
gentleness, insinuated. But, besides his family pre- 
tensions, Plumer was an engaging fellow, and sang 

gloriously. 

Not so sweetly sang Plumer as thou sangest, mild, 

childlike, pastoral M ; a flute's breathing less 

divinely whispering than thy Arcadian melodies, when, 
in tones worthy of Arden, thou didst chant that song 
sung by Amiens to the banished Duke, which pro- 
claims the winter wind more lenient than for a man 

to be ungratefiil. Thy sire was old surly M- , the 

unapproachable churchwarden of Bishopsgate. He 
knew not what he did, when he begat thee, like spring, 
gentle offspring of blustering winter : — only unfortu- 
nate in thy ending, which should have been mild, con- 
ciliatory, swan-like. 



OXFOED IN THE VACATION. 19 

Much remains to sing. Many fantastic shapes rise 
np, but they must be mine in private ; — abeady I 
have fooled the reader to the top of his bent ; — else 
could I omit that strange creature Woollett, who 
existed in trying the question, and bought litigations P 
— and still stranger, inimitable, solemn Hepworth, 
from whose gravity Newton might have deduced the 
law of gravitation. How profoundly would he nib 
a pen — with what deliberation would he wet a 
wafer ! 

But it is time to close — night's wheels are rattling 
fast over me — it is proper to have done with this 
solemn mockery. 

Reader, what if I have been playing with thee all 
this while? — peradventure the very names, which I 
have summoned up before thee, are fantastic — insub- 
stantial — like Henry Pimpernel, and old John Naps 
of Greece ; 

Be satisfied that something answering to them has 
had a being. Their importance is from the past. 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 

Casting a preparatory glance at the bottom of this 
article — as the wary connoisseur in prints, with cur- 
sory eye, (which, while it reads, seems as though it 
read not,) never fails to consult the quis seulpsit in 
the corner, before he pronounces some rare piece to 

be a Yivares, or a Woollett methinks I hear you 

exclaim. Reader, WJio is Elia f 

Because in my last I tried to divert thee with some 



20 OXFOKD IN THE VACATION. 

half-^forgotten humors of some old clerks defanct, in 
an old house of business, long since gone to decay, 
doubtless you have already set me down in your mind 

as one of the self-same college— a votary of the 

desk — a notched and cropt scrivener — one that sucks 
his sustenance, as certain sick people are said to do, 
through a quill. 

Well, I do agnize something of the sort. I confess 
that it is my humor, my fancy — in the forepart of 
the day, when the mind of your man of letters requires 
some relaxation — (and none better than such as at 
first sight seems most abhorrent from his beloved 
studies) — to while away some good hours of my 
time in the contemplation of indigos, cottons, raw 
silks, piece-goods, flowered or otherwise. In the 
first place ....... 

and then it sends you home with such increased appe- 
tite to your books . ..... 

not to say, that your outside sheets, and waste wrap- 
pers of foolscap, do receive into them, most kindly 
and naturally, the impression of sonnets, epigrams, 
essays — so that the very parings of a counting-house 
are, in some sort, the settings up of an author. The 
enfranchised quill, that has plodded all the morning 
among the cart-rucks of figures and ciphers, frisks 
and curvets so at its ease over the flowery carpet- 
ground of a midnight dissertation. — It feels its pro- 
motion. ........ 

So that you see, upon the whole, the literary dignity 
of Mia is very little, if at all, compromised in the 
condescension. 

Not that, in my anxious detail of the many com- 
modities incidental to the life of a public office, I 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 21 

would be thouglit blind to certain flaws, which a 
cunning carper might be able to pick in this Joseph's 
vest. And here I must have leave, in the fulness of 
my soul, to regret the abolition, and doing-away-with 
altogether, of those consolatory interstices, and sprink- 
lings of freedom, through the four seasons, — the red- 
letter days^ now become, to all intents and purposes, 
dead-letter day§. There was Paul, and Stephen, and 
Barnabas — 

Andrew and John, men famous in old times 

— we were used to keep all their days holy, as long 
back as I was at school at Christ's. I remember 
their effigies, by the same token, in the old Basket 
Prayer Book. There hung Peter in his uneasy 

posture holy Bartlemy in the troublesome act of 

flapng, after the famous Marsyas by Spagnoletti. 

1 honored them all, and could almost have wept 

the defalcation of Iscariot — so much did we love to 
keep holy memories sacred ; — only methought I a 
little grudged at the coalition of the better Jude with 
Simon — clubbing (as it were) their sanctities together, 
to make up one poor gaudy-day between them — as an 
economy unworthy of the dispensation. 

These were bright visitations in a scholar's and a 
clerk's life — " far off their coming shone." — I was as 
good as an almanac in those days. I could have told 
you such a saint's day falls out next week, or the week 
after. Peradventure the Epiphany, by some periodical 
infelicity, would, once in six years, merge in a Sabbath. 
Now am I little better than one of the profane. Let 
me not be thought to arraign the wisdom of my civil 
superiors, who have judged the farther observation of 



22 OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 

these hoi J tides to be papistical, superstitious. Only 
in a custom of such long standing, methinks, if their 
Holinesses the Bishops had, in decency, been first 

sounded -but I am wading out of my depths. I 

am not the man to decide the limits of civil and ecclesi- 
astical authority I am plain Elia — no Selden, 

nor Archbishop Usher — though at present in the thick 
of their books, here in the heart of learning, under the 
shadow of the mighty Bodley. 

I can here play the gentleman, enact the student. 
To such a one as myself, who has been defrauded in 
his young years of the sweet food of academic insti- 
tution, nowhere is so pleasant, to while away a few 
idle weeks at, as one or other of the Universities. 
Their vacation, too, at this time of the year, falls in 
so pat with ours. Here I can take my walks unmo- 
lested, and fancy myself of what degree or standing 
I please. I seem admitted ad eundem. I fetch up 
past opportunities. I can rise at the chapel-bell, and 
dream that it rings for me. In moods of humility I 
can be a Sizar, or a Servitor. When the peacock vein 
rises, I strut a Gentleman Commoner. In graver 
moments, I proceed Master of Arts. Indeed I do 
not think I am much unlike that respectable char- 
acter. I have seen your dim-eyed vergers, and bed- 
makers in spectacles, drop a bow or a curtsy, as I pass, 
wisely mistaking me for something of the sort. I go 
about in black, which favors the notion. Only in 
Christ Church reverend quadrangle, I can be content 
to pass for nothing short of a Seraphic Doctor. 

The walks at these times are so much one's own, — 
the tall trees of Christ's, the groves of Magdalen ! 
The halls deserted, and with open doors inviting one 



OXFORD IN THE VACATION. 23 

to slip in unperceived, and pay a devoir to some 
Founder, or noble or royal Benefactress (that should 
have been ours), whose portrait seems to smile upon 
their over-looked beadsman, and to adopt me for their 
own. Then, to take a peep in by the way at the but- 
teries, and sculleries, redolent of antique hospitality 
the immense caves of kitchens, kitchen fireplaces, 
cordial recesses ; ovens whose first pies were baked 
four centuries ago ; and spits which have cooked for 
Chaucer ! Not the meanest minister amono; the dishes 
but is hallowed to me through his imaoination, and the 
Gook goes forth a Manciple. 

Antiquity ! thou wondrous charm, what art thou ? 
that being nothing, art everything ! When thou wert^ 
thou wert not antiquity — then thou wert nothing, but 
hadst a remoter afitiquity^ as thou calledst it, to look 
back to with blind veneration ; thou thyself being to 
thyself flat, jejune, modern! What mystery lurks in 
this retroversion ? or what half Januses * are we, 
that cannot look forward with the same idolatry with 
which we forever revert ! The mighty fiiture is as 
nothing, being everything ! the past is everything, 
being nothing ! 

What were thy dark ages ? Surely the sun rose as 
brightly then as now, and man got him to his work in 
the morning. Why is it we can never hear mention 
of them without an accompanying feeling, as though 
a palpable obscure had dimmed the face of things, and 
that our ancestors wandered to and fro groping ! 

Above all thy rarities, old Oxenford, what do most 
arride and solace me, are thy repositories of mouldering 

learning, thy shelves 

* Januses of one face. — Sir Thomas Beowne. 



24 OXFOED IN THE VACATION. 

What a place to be in is an old library 1 It seems 
as thougli all the sonls of all the writers, that have 
bequeathed their labors to these Bodleians, were re- 
posing here as in some dormitory, or middle state. I 
do not want to handle, to profane the leaves, their 
winding-sheets. I could as soon dislodge a shade. I 
seem to inhale learning, walking amid their foliage ; 
and the odor of their old moth-scented coverings is 
fi^agrant as the first bloom of those sciential apples 
which grew amid the happy orchard. 

Still less have I curiosity to disturb the elder repose 
of MSS. Those varim lectiones, so tempting to the 
more erudite palates, do but disturb and unsettle my 
faith. I am no Herculanean raker. The credit of the 
three witnesses might have slept unimpeached for me. 
I leave these curiosities to Porson, and to G. D. — 
whom, by the way, I found busy as a moth over some 
rotten archive, rummaged out of some seldom-explored 
press, in a nook at Oriel. With long poring, he is 
grown almost into a book. He stood as passive as one 
by the side of the old shelves. I longed to new coat 
him in russia, and assign him his place. He might 
have mustered for a tall Scapula. 

D. is assiduous in his visits to these seats of learning. 
No inconsiderable portion of his moderate fortune, I 
apprehend, is consumed in journeys between them and 

Clifford's-inn where, like a dove on the asp's nest, 

he has long taken up his unconscious abode, amid an 
incongruous assembly of attorneys, attorneys' clerks, 
apparitors, promoters, vermin of the law, among whom 
he sits "^ in calm and sinless peace." The fangs of the 
law pierce him not — the winds of litigation blow over 
his humble chambers — the hard sheriff 's officer moves 



OXFOED IN THE VACATION. 25 

his hat as he passes — legal nor illegal discourtesy 
touches him — none thinks of offering violence or in- 
justice to him — you would as soon " strike an ab- 
stract idea." 

D. has been engaged, he tells me, through a course 
of laborious years, in an inyestigation into all curious 
matter connected with the two Universities ; and has 
lately lit upon a MS. collection of charters, relative 

to C , by which he hopes to settle some disputed 

points — particularly that long controversy between 
them as to priority of foundation. The ardor with 
which he engages in these liberal pursuits, I am afraid, 
has not met with all the encouragement it deserved, 

either here, or at C . Your caputs, and heads of 

colleges, care less than anybody else about these ques- 
tions. — Contented to suck the milky fountains of their 
Alma Maters, without inquiring into the venerable 
gentlewomen's years, they rather hold such curiosities 
to be impertinent — unreverend. They have their 
good glebe lands in manu, and care not much to rake 
into the title deeds. I gather at least so much from 
other sources, for D. is not a man to complain. 

D. started like an unbroke heifer, when I inter- 
rupted him. A priori it was not very probable that 
we should have met in Oriel. But D. would have 
done the same, had I accosted him on the sudden in 
his own walks in Clifford's-inn, or in the Temple. In 
addition to a provoking short-sightedness (the effect of 
late studies and watchings at the midnight oil), D. is 
the most absent of men. He made a call the other 
morning at our friend M.'s in Bedford-square; and, 
finding nobody at home, was ushered into the hall, 
where, asking for pen and ink, with great exactitude 



26 OXFOED IN THE VACATION. 

of purpose he enters me liis name in the book — which 
ordinarily hes about in such places, to record the fail- 
ures of the untimely or unfortunate visitor — and takes 
his leave with many ceremonies and professions of 
regret. Some two or three hours after, his walking 
destinies returned him into the same neighborhood 
again, and again the quiet image of the fireside circle 
at M.'s — Mrs. M. presiding at it like a Queen Lar, 
with pretty A. S. at her side — striking irresistibly on 
his fancy, he makes another call (forgetting that they 
were " certainly not to return from the country before 
that day week "), and disappointed a second time, in- 
quires for pen and paper as before ; again the book is 
brought, and in the line just above that in which he is 
about to print his second name (his re-script) — his first 
name (scarce dry) looks out upon him like another 
Sosia, or as if a man should suddenly encounter his 
own duplicate ! — The efPect may be conceived. D. 
made many a good resolution against any such lapses 
in fiiture. I hope he will not keep them too rigorously. 
For with G. D. — to be absent from the body, is 
sometimes (not to speak it profanely) to be present 
with the Lord. At the very time when, personally 
encountering thee, he passes on with no recognition 

or, being stopped, starts like a thing surprised — 

at that moment, reader, he is on Mount Tabor — 
or Parnassus — or co-sphered with Plato — or, with 
Plarrington, framing " immortal commonwealths " — 
devising some plan of amelioration to thy country, or 
thy species ■ peradventure meditating some indi- 
vidual kindness or courtesy, to be done to thee thyself^ 
the returning consciousness of which made him to 
start so guiltily at thy obtruded personal presence. 



CHEIST'S HOSPITAL, &c. 27 

D. is delightful anywhere, but he is at the best in 
such places as these. He cares not much for Bath. 
He is out of his element at Buxton, at Scarborough, 
or Harrowgate. The Cam and the Isis are to him 
" better than all the waters of Damascus." On the 
Muses' hill he is happy, and good, as one of the 
Shepherds on the Delectable Mountains ; and when 
he goes about with you to show you the halls and 
colleges, you think you have with you the Interpreter 
at the House Beautiful. 



CHRIST'S HOSPITAL FIYE-AND-THIRTY YEARS 

AGO. 

In Mr. Lamb's " Works," published a year or two 
since, I find a magnificent eulogy on my old school,* 
such as it was, or now appears to liim to have been, 
between the years 1782 and 1789. It happens, very 
oddly, that my own standing at Christ's was nearly 
corresponding with his ; and, with all gratitude to him 
for his enthusiasm for the cloisters, I think he has con- 
trived to bring together whatever can be said in praise 
of them, dropping all the other side of the argument 
most ingeniously. 

I remember L. at school ; and can well recollect 
that he had some peculiar advantages, which I and 
others of his schoolfellows had not. His friends lived 
in town, and were near at hand ; and he had the privi- 
lege of going to see them, almost as often as he w^ished, 
through some invidious distinction, which was denied to 
* Eecollections of Christ's Hospital. 



28 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

US. The present worthy sub-treasurer to the Inner 
Temple can explain how that happened. He had his 
tea and hot rolls in a morning, while we were batten- 
ing upon our quarter-of-a-penny-loaf — our crug — 
moistened with attenuated small beer, in wooden pig- 
gins, smacking of the pitched leathern jack it was 
poured from. Our Monday's milk porridge, blue and 
tasteless, and the pease soup of Saturday, coarse and 
choking, were enriched for him with a slice of " extra- 
orduiary bread and butter," from the hot-loaf of the 
Temple. The Wednesday's mess of millet, somewhat 
less repugnant — (we had three banyan to four meat 
days in the week) — was endeared to his palate with a 
lump of double-refined, and a smack of ginger (to make 
it go down the more glibly) or the fragrant cinnamon. 
In lieu of our Tialf-fickled Sundays, or quite fresh boiled 
beef on Thursdays (strong as caro equina)^ with detest- 
able marigolds floating in the pail to poison the broth 
— our scanty mutton scrags on Fridays — and rather 
more savoury, but grudging, portions of the same flesh, 
rotten-roasted or rare, on the Tuesdays (the only dish 
which excited our appetites, and disappointed our stom- 
achs, in almost equal proportion) — he had his hot 
plate of roast veal, or the more tempting griskin (exot- 
ics unknown to our palates), cooked in the paternal 
kitchen (a great thmg), and brought him daily by his 
maid or aunt ! I remember the good old relative (in 
whom love forbade pride) squatting down upon some odd 
stone in a by-nook of the cloisters, disclosing the viands 
(of higher regale than those cates which the ravens 
ministered to the Tishbite) ; and the contending pas- 
sions of L. at the unfolding. There was love for the 
bringer ; shame for the thing brought, and the manner 



FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEAES AGO. 29 

of its bringing ; sympathy for tliose who were too many 
to share in it ; and, at top of all, hunger (eldest, 
strongest of the passions !) predominant, breaking down 
the stony fences of shame, and awkwardness, and a 
troublino^ over-consciousness. 

I was a poor friendless boy. My parents, and those 
who should care for me, were far away. Those few 
acquaintances of theirs, which they could reckon upon 
being kind to me in the great city, after a little forced 
notice, which they had the grace to take of me on my 
first arrival in town, soon grew tired of my holiday 
visits. They seemed to them to recur too often, 
though I thought them few enough ; and, one after 
another, they all failed me, and I felt myself alone 
among six hundred playmates. 

O the cruelty of separating a poor lad fr'om his 
early homestead ! The yearnings which I used to 
have towards it in those unfledged years ! How, in 
my dreams, would my native town (far in the west) 
come back, with its church, and trees, and faces ! 
How I would wake weeping, and in the anguish of 
my heart exclaim upon sweet Calne in Wiltshire. 

To this late hour of my life, I trace impressions 
left by the recollection of those friendless holidays. 
The long warm days of summer never return but 
they bring with them a gloom fi'om the haunting 
memory of those whole-day leaves^ when by some 
strange arrangement we were turned out, for the live- 
long day, upon our own hands, whether we had fi-iends 
to go to, or none. I remember those bathing excur- 
sions to the New River, which L. recalls with such 
relish, better, I think, than he can — for he was a home- 
seeking lad, and did not much care for such water- 



30 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

pastimes : — How merrily we would sally forth into the 
fields ; and strip under the first warmth of the sun ; 
and wanton like young dace in the streams ; getting us 
appetites for noon, which those of us that were penni- 
less (our scanty morning crust long since exhausted) 
had not the means of allaying — while the cattle, aud 
the birds, and the fishes, were at feed about us and we 
had nothing to satisfy our cravings — the very beauty 
of the day, and the exercise of the pastime, and the 
sense of liberty, setting a keener edge upon them ! — 
How faint and languid, finally, we would return, tow- 
ards nightfall, to our desired morsel, half-rejoicing, 
half-reluctant, that the hours of our uneasy liberty had 
expired ! 

It was worse in the days of winter, to go prowling 
about the streets objectless — shivering at cold windows 
of print-shops, to extract a little amusement ; or haply, 
as a last resort in the hopes of a little novelty, to pay a 
fifty-times repeated visit (where our individual faces 
should be as well known to the warden as those of his 
own charges) to the Lions in the Tower — to whose 
levee, by courtesy immemorial, we had a prescriptive 
title to admission. 

L.'s governor (so we called the patron who pre- 
sented us to the foundation) hved in a manner under 
his paternal roof. Any complaint which he had to 
make was sure of being attended to. This was under- 
stood at Christ's, and was an effectual screen to him 
against the severity of masters, or worse tyranny of 
the monitors. The oppressions of these young brutes 
are heart-sickening to call to recollection. I have been 
called out of my bed, and waked for the purpose^ in the 
coldest winter nights — and this not once, but night 



FIVE-AND-THIETY YEAES AGO. 31 

after night — in my shirt, to receive the discipline of a 
leathern thong, with eleven other sufferers, because it 
pleased my callow overseer, when there had been any 
talking heard after we were gone to bed, to make the 
last six beds in the dormitory, where the youngest 
children of us slept, answerable for an offence they 
neither dared to commit, nor had the power to hinder. 
The same execrable tyranny drove the younger part of 
us from the fires, when our feet were perishing with 
snow ; and, under the cruelest penalties, forbade the 
indulgence of a drink of water when we lay in sleep- 
less summer nights, fevered with the season and the 
day's sports. 

There was one H , who, I learned, in after days, 

was seen expiating some maturer offence in the hulks. 
(Do I flatter myself in fancying that this might be the 
planter of that name, who suffered — at Nevis, I think, 
or St. Kitts — some few years since ? My friend 
Tobin was the benevolent instrument of bringing him 
to the gallows.) This petty Nero actually branded a 
boy, who had offended him, with a redhot iron ; and 
nearly starved forty of us, with exacting contributions, 
to the one half of our bread, to pamper a young ass, 
which, incredible as it may seem, with the connivance 
of the nurse's daughter (a young flame of his) he had 
contrived to smuggle in, and keep upon the leads of the 
ward^ as they called our dormitories. This game went 
on for better than a week, till the foolish beast, not able 
to fare well but he must cry roast meat — happier than 
Caligula's minion, could he have kept his own counsel 
— but, foolisher, alas I than any of his species in the 
fables — waxing fat, and kicking, in the fulness of 
bread, one unlucky minute would needs proclaim his 



32 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

good fortune to tlie world below ; and, laying out his 
simple throat, blew such a ram's-horn blast, as (toppling 
down the walls of his own Jericho) set concealment 
any longer at defiance. The client was dismissed, with 
certain attentions, to Smithfield ; but I never under- 
stood that the patron underwent any censure on the 
occasion. This was in the stewardship of L.'s admired 
Perry. 

Under the same facile administration, can L. haA^^e 
forgotten the cool impunity with which the nurses used 
to carry away openly, in open platters, for their own 
tables, one out of two of every hot joint, which the care- 
ful matron had been seeing scrupulously weighed out 
for our dinners ? These things were daily practised in 
that magnificent apartment, which L. (grown connois- 
seur since, we presume,) praises so highly for the grand 
paintings " by Yerrio, and others," with which it is 
" hung round and adorned." But the sight of sleek 
well-fed blue-coat boys in pictures was, at that time, I 
believe, little consolatory to him, or us, the living ones, 
who saw the better part of our provisions carried away 
before our faces by harpies ; and ourselves reduced 
(with the Trojan in the hall of Dido) 

To feed our mind with idle portraiture. 

L. has recorded the repugnance of the school to 
gags^ or the fat of fresh beef boiled ; and sets it down 
to some superstition. But these unctuous morsels are 
never grateful to young palates (children are univer- 
sally fat-haters), and in strong, coarse, boiled meats, 
unsalted^ are detestable. A gag-eater in our time was 
equivalent to a ghoul, and held in equal detestation. 
suffered under the imputation : 



FIVE AND THIETY YEAKS AGO. 33 

'Twas said 
He ate strange flesh. 

He was observed, after dinner, cw^efojly to gather up 
the remnants left at his table (not muliy, nor very- 
choice fragments you may credit me,) — and, in an 
especial manner, these disreputable morsels, which he 
would convey away, and secretly stow in the settle 
that stood at his bedside. None saw when he ate 
them. It was rumoured that he privately devoured 
them in the night. He was watched, but no traces of 
such midnight practices were discoverable. Some re- 
ported, that, on leave-days, he had been seen to carry 
out of the bounds a large blue check handkerchief, full 
of something. This then must be the accursed thing. 
Conjecture next was at work to imagine how he could 
dispose of it. Some said he sold it to the beggars. 
This belief generally prevailed. He went about mop- 
ing. None spake to him. No one would play with 
him. He was excommunicated ; put out of the pale of 
the school. He was too powerful a boy to be beaten, 
but he underwent every mode of that negative punish- 
ment, which is more grievous than many stripes. Still 
he persevered. At length he was observed by two of 
his school-fellows, who were determined to get at the 
secret, and had traced him one leave-day for that pur- 
pose, to enter a large worn-out building, such as there 
exist specimens of in Chancery-lane, which are let out 
to various scales of pauperism, with open door and a 
common staircase. After him they silently slunk in, 
and followed by stealth up four flights, and saw him 
tap at a poor wicket, which was opened by an aged 
woman, meanly clad. Suspicion was now ripened mto 
certainty. The informers had secured their victim. 



34 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

They had him m their toils. Accusation was formally 
preferred, and retribution most signal was looked for. 
Mr. Hathaway, the then steward (for this happened a 
little after my time), with that patient sagacity which 
tempered all his conduct, determined to investigate the 
matter, before he proceeded to sentence. The result 
was, that the supposed mendicants, the receivers or 
purchasers of the mysterious scraps, turned out to be 

the parents of , an honest couple come to decay — 

whom this seasonable supply had, in all probability, 
saved from mendicancy ; and that this young stork, at 
the expense of his own good name, had all this while 
been only feeding the old birds ! — The governors on 
this occasion, much to their honor, voted a present 

relief to the family of , and presented him with a 

silver medal. The lesson which the steward read upon 
RASH JUDGMENT, ou the occasiou of publicly delivering 

the medal to , I believe would not be lost upon his 

auditory. — I had left school then, but I well remem- 
ber . He was a tall, shambling youth, with a cast 

ib his eye, not at all calculated to conciliate hostile p^'e- 
judices. I have since seen him carrying a baker's 
basket. I think I heard he did not do quite so well by 
himself, as he had done by the old folks. 

I was a hypochondriac lad ; and the sight of a boy 
in fetters, upon the day of my first putting on the blue 
clothes, was not exactly fitted to assuage the natural 
terrors of initiation. I was of tender years, barely 
turned of seven ; and had only read of such things in 
books, or seen them but in dreams. I was told he had 
run away. This was the punishment for the first 
offence. — As a novice I was soon after taken to see 
the dungeons. These were little, square, Bedlam cells, 



FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 35 

where a boy could just lie at his length upon straw and 
a blanket - — a mattress, I think, was afterwards substi- 
tuted — with a peep of light, let in askance, from a 
prison-orifice at top, barely enough to read by. Here 
the poor boy was locked in by himself all day, without 
sight of any but the porter who brought him his bread 
and watei' — who might not speak to him ; — or of the 
beadle, who came twice a w^eek to call him out to re- 
ceive his periodical chastisement, which was almost 
welcome, because it separated him for a brief interval 
from solitude ; — and here he was shut up by himself 
of 7iight8 out of the reach of any sound, to suflPer what- 
ever horrors the weak nerves, and superstition incident 
to his time of life, might subject him to.* This was 
the penalty for the second offence. Wouldst thou like, 
reader, to see what became of him in the next decree ? 
The culprit, who had been a third time an oflPender, 
and whose expulsion was at this time deemed irreversi- 
ble, was brought forth, as at some solemn auto da /e, 
arrayed in uncouth and most appalling attire — all 
trace of his late " watchet weeds " carefully effaced, he 
was exposed in a jacket resembling those which London 
lamplighters formerly delighted in, with a cap of the 
same. The effect of this divestiture was such as the 
ingenious devisers of it could have anticipated. With 
his pale and frighted features, it was as if some of those 
disfigurements in Dante had seized upon him. In this 
disguisement he was brought into the hall (^L'' s favorite 

* One or two instances of lunacy, or attempted suicide, accordingly, at 
length convinced the governors of the impolicy of this part of the sentence, 
and the midnight torture to the spirits was dispensed with. — This fancy 
of dungeons for children was a sprout of Howard's brain; for which (sav- 
ing the reverence due to Holy Paul) methinks, I could willingly spit upon 
his statue. 



86 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

state-room^, where awaited Mm the whole number of 
his school-fellows, whose jouit lessons and sports he was 
thenceforth to share no .more ; the awful presence of 
the steward, to be seen for the last time ; of the execu- 
tioner beadle, clad in his state robe for the occasion ; 
and of two faces more, of direr import, because never 
but in these extremities visible. These were gover- 
nors ; two of whom by choice, or charter, wxre always 
accustomed to officiate at these Ultima Supplicia ; not 
to mitigate (so at least we understood it), but to en- 
force the uttermost stripe. Old Bamber Gascoigne, 
and Peter Aubert, I remember, were colleagues on one 
occasion, when the beadle turning rather pale, a glass 
of brandy was ordered to prepare him for the mysteries. 
The scourging was, after the old Roman fashion, long 
and stately. The lictor accompanied the criminal quite 
round the hall. We were generally too faint with at- 
tending to the previous disgusting circumstances, to 
make accurate report with our eyes of the degree of 
corporal suffering inflicted. Report, of course, gave 
out the back knotty and livid. After scourging, he 
was made over, in his San Benito, to his friends, if he 
had any (but commonly such poor runagates were 
friendless), or to his parish officer, who, to enhance 
the effect of the scene, had his station allotted to him 
on the outside of the hall gate. 

These solemn pageantries were not played off so 
often as to spoil the general mirth of the community. 
We had plenty of exercise and recreation after school 
hours ; and, for myself, I • must confess, that I was 
never happier, than in them. The Upper and the 
Lower Grammar Schools were held in the same room ; 
and an imaginary line only divided their bounds. 



FIVE-AND-THIKTY YEARS AGO. 37 

Their character was as different as that of the inhab- 
itants on the two sides of the Pyrenees. The Rev. 
James Boyer was the Upper Master ; but the Rev. 
Matthew Field presided over that portion of the apart- 
ment of which I had the good fortune to be a member. 
We lived a life as careless as birds. We talked and 
did just what we pleased, and nobody molested us. 
We carried an accidence, or a grammar, for form ; but, 
for any trouble it gave us, we might take two years in 
getting through the verbs deponent, and another two 
in forgetting all that we had learned about them. 
There was now and then the formality of saying a 
lesson, but if you had not learned it, a brush across the 
shoulders (just enough to disturb a fly) was the sole 
remonstrance. Field never used the rod ; and in truth 
he wielded the cane with no great good-will — holding 
it " like a dancer." It looked in his hands rather like 
an emblem than an instrument of authority; and an 
emblem, too, he was ashamed of. He was a good easy 
man, that did not care to ruffle his own peace, nor per- 
haps set any great consideration upon the value of 
juvenile time. He came among us, now and then, but 
often stayed away whole days from us ; and when he 
came it made no difference to us — he had his private 
room to retire to, the short time he stayed, to be out of 
the sound of our noise. Our mirth and uproar went 
on. We had classics of our own, without being be- 
holden to " insolent Greece or haughty Rome," that 
passed current among us — Peter Wilkins — the Ad- 
ventures of the Hon. Captain Robert Boyle — the. 
Fortunate Blue Coat Boy — and the like. Or we cul- 
tivated a turn for mechanic and scientific operations ; 
making little sun-dials of paper ; or weaving those in- 



38 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

genious parentheses called cat^cradles ; or maldng dry 
peas to dance upon tlie end of a tin pipe ; or studying 
the art military over that laudable game " French and 
English," and a hundred other such devices to pass 
away the time — mixing the useful with the agreeable 
— as would have made the souls of Rousseau and John 
Locke chuckle to have seen us. 

Matthew Field belonged to that class of modest 
divines who affect to mix in equal proportion the 
gentleman^ the scholar^ and the Ohristian ; but, I know 
not how, the first ingredient is generally found to be 
the predominating dose in the composition. He was 
engaged in gay parties, or with his courtly bow at 
some episcopal levee, when he should have been attend- 
ing upon us. He had for many years the classical 
charge of a hundred children, during the four or five 
first years of their education ; and his very highest 
form seldom proceeded further than two or three of the 
introductory fables of Phsedrus. How things were suf- 
fered to go on thus, I cannot guess. Boyer, who was 
the proper person to have remedied these abuses, 
always affected, perhaps felt, a delicacy in interfering 
in a province not strictly his own. I have not been 
without my suspicions, that he was not altogether dis- 
pleased at the contrast we presented to his end of the 
school. We were a sort of Helots to his young Spar- 
tans. He would sometimes, with ironic deference, send 
to borrow a rod of the Under Master, and then, with 
Sardonic grin, observe to one of his upper boys " how 
neat and fresh the twigs looked." While his pale 
students were battering their brains over Xenophon 
and Plato, with a silence as deep as that enjoined by 
the Samite, we were enjoying ourselves at our ease in 



FlVE-AND-TfflRTY YEARS AGO. 39 

our little Goshen. We saw a little into the secrets of 
his discipline, and the prospect did but the more recon- 
cile us to our lot. His thunders rolled iiniocuous for 
us ; his storms came near, but never touched us ; con- 
trary to Gideon's miracle, while all around were 
drenched, our fleece was dry.* His boys turned out 
the better scholars ; we, I suspect, have the advantage 
in temper. His pupils cannot speak of him without 
something of terror allaying their gratitude ; the re- 
membrance of Field comes back with all the soothing 
images of indolence, and summer slumbers, and work 
like play, and innocent idleness, and Elysian exemp- 
tions, and life itself a " playing holiday." 

Though sufficiently removed from the jurisdiction 
of Boyer, we were near enough (as I have said) to 
understand a little of his system. We occasionally 
heard sounds of the Ululantes^ and caught glances of 
Tartarus. B. was a rabid pedant. His English style 
was crampt to barbarism. His Easter anthems (for 
his duty obliged him to those periodical flights) were 
grating as scrannel pipes. f — He would laugh, ay, and 
heartily, but then it must be at Flaccus's quibble about 

Rex or at the tfistis severitas in vultu, or inspicere 

in patinas, of Terence — thin jests, which at their first 
broaching could hardly have had vis enough to move a 
Roman muscle. — He had two wigs, both pedantic, but 

* Cowley. 

t In this and everything B. was the antipodes of his coadjutor. While 
the former was digging his brains for crude anthems, worth a pignut, F. 
would be recreating his gentlemanly fancy in the more flowery walks of 
the Muses. A little dramatic effusion of his, under the name of Vertumnus 
and Pomona, is not yet forgotten by the chroniclers of that sort of litera- 
ture. It was accepted by Garrick, but the town did not give it their 
sanction. — B. used to say of it, in a way of half-compliment, half-irony, 
chat it was too classical for representation. 



40 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

of different omen. The one serene, smiling, fresh 
powdered, betokening a mild day. The other, an old, 
discolored, unkempt, angry caxon, denoting frequent 
and bloody execution. Woe to the school, when he 
made his morning appearance in his passy^ or 23assionate 
wig. No comet expounded surer. — J. B. had a heavy 
hand. I have known him double his knotty fist at a 
poor trembling child (the maternal milk hardly dry 
upon its lips) with a " Sirrah, do you presume to set 
your wits at me ? " — Nothing was more common than 
to see him make a headlong entry into the school-room, 
from his inner recess, or library, and, with turbulent 
eye, singling out a lad, roar out, " Od's my life, sirrah," 
(his favorite adjuration), " I have a great mind to whip 
you," — then, with as sudden a retractmg impulse, 
fling back into his lair — and, after a cooling lapse of 
some minutes (during which all but the culprit had 
totally forgotten the context) drive headlong out again, 
piecing out his imperfect sense, as if it had been some 
Devil's Litany, with the expletory yell — " and Jv^ill, 
too." — In his gentler moods, when the rabidiis faror 
was assuaged, he had resort to an ingenious method, 
peculiar, for what I have heard, to .himself, of whipping 
the boy, and reading the Debates, at the same time ; a 
paragraph, and a lash between ; which in those tim-.es, 
when parliamentary oratory was most at a height and 
flourishing in these realms, was not calculated to im- 
press the patient with a veneration for the difluser 
graces of rhetoric. 

Once, and but once, the uplifted rod was known to 
fall ineffectual from his hand — when droll squinting 
W. — having been caught putting the inside of the 
master's desk to a use for which the architect had 



FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 41 

clearly not designed it, to justify himself, with great 
simplicity averred, that he did not hnow that the thing 
had been forewarned. This exquisite irrecognition of 
any law antecedent to the oral or declaratory^ struck so 
irresistibly upon the fancy of all who heard it (the 
pedagogue himself not excepted) — that remission was 
unavoidable. 

L. has given credit to B.'s great merits as an 
instructor. Coleridge, in his literary life, has pro- 
nounced a more intelligible and ample encomium on 
them. The author of the Country Spectator doubts 
not to compare him with the ablest teachers of antiq- 
uity. Perhaps we cannot dismiss him better than 
with the pious ejaculation of C. — when he heard that 
his old master was on his death-bed: "Poor J. B. ! 
— may all his faults be forgiven ; and may he be 
wafted to bliss by little cherub boys all head and wings, 
with no 'bottoms to reproach his sublunary infirmities." 

Under him were many good and sound scholars 
bred. — First Grecian of my time was Lancelot Pepys 
Stevens, kindest of boys and men, since Co-grammar- 
master (and inseparable companion) with Dr. T e. 

What an edifying spectacle did this brace of friends 
present to those who remembered the anti-socialities of 
their predecessors I — You never met the one by chance 
in the street without a wonder, which was quickly dis- 
sipated by the almost immediate sub-appearance of the 
other. Generally arm-in-arm, these kindly coadjutors 
lightened for each other the toilsome duties of their 
profession, and when, in advanced age, one found it 
convenient to retire, the other was not long in discover- 
ing that it suited him to lay down the fasces also. Oh, 
it is pleasant, as it is rare, to find the same arm linked 



42 CHRIST'S HOSPITAL 

in yours at forty, wliich at thirteen helped it to turn 
over the Cicero Be Amicitid, or some tale of Antique 
Friendship, which the young heart even then was burn- 
ing to anticipate ! — Co-Grecian with S. was Th , 

who has since executed with ability various diplomatic 

fiinctions at the Northern courts. Th was a tall, 

dark, saturnine youth, sparing of speech, with raven 
locks. — Thomas Fanshaw Middleton followed him 
(now Bishop of Calcutta), a scholar and a gentleman 
in his teens. He has the reputation of an excellent 
critic ; and is author (besides the Country Spectator) 
of a Treatise on the Greek Article, against Sharpe. 
M. is said to bear his mitre high in India, where the 
regni novitas (I dare say) sufficiently justifies the bear- 
ing. A humility quite as primitive as that of Jewel or 
Hooker might not be exactly fitted to impress the 
minds of those Anglo-Asiatic diocesans with a rever- 
ence for home institutions, and the church wdiich those 
fathers watered. The manners of M. at school, though 
firm, were mild and unassuming. — Next to M. (if not 
senior to him) was Richards, author of the Aboriginal 
Britons, the most spirited of the Oxford Prize Poems ; 

a pale, studious Grecian. — Then followed poor S , 

ill-fated M ! of these the Muse is silent. 

Finding some of IJdward's race 
Unhapp}^, pass their annals by. 

Come back into memory, like as thou wert in the 
dayspring of thy fancies, with hope like a fiery column 
before thee — the dark pillar not yet turned — Samuel 
Taylor Coleridge — Logician, Metaphysician, Bard ! — 
How have I seen the casual passer through the Clois- 
ters stand still, entranced with admiration (while he 



FIVE-AND-THIRTY YEARS AGO. 43 

weighed the disproportion between the speech and the 
garh of the young Mirandula), to hear thee unfold, in 
thy deep and sweet intonations, the mysteries of Jam- 
bhchus, or Plotinus (for even in those years thou 
waxedst not pale at such philosophic draughts), or 

reciting Homer in his Greek, or Pindar while the 

walls of the old Grey Friars reechoed to the accents 
of the inspired charity-hoy I — Many were the "wit- 
combats," (to dally awhile with the words of old Ful- 
ler), between him and C. V. Le G , " which two 

I behold like a Spanish great galleon, and an English 
man-of-war ; Master Coleridge, like the former, was 
built far higher in learning, solid, but slow in his per- 
formances. C. V. L., with the English man-of-war, 
lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all 
tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by 
the quickness of his wit and invention." 

Nor shalt thou, their compeer, be quicldy forgotten, 
Allen, with the cordial smile, and still more cordial 
laugh, with which thou wert wont to make the old 
Cloisters shake, in thy cognition of some poignant jest 
of theirs ; or the anticipation of some more material, 
and, peradventure, practical one, of thine own. Ex- 
tinct are those smiles, with that beautiful countenance, 
with which (for thou wert the Nireus formosus of the 
school), in the days of thy maturer waggery, thou didst 
disarm the wrath of infuriated town-damsel, who, in- 
censed by provoking pinch, turning tigress-like round, 
suddenly converted by thy angel-look, exchanged the 

half-formed terrible " 5Z ," for a gentler greeting 

— " bless thy handsome face ! ^^ , 

Next follow two, who ought to be now alive, and the 
friends of Elia — the junior Le G and F ; 



44 THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 

who impelled, the former by a roving temper, the latter 
by too quick a sense of neglect — ill capable of endur- 
ing the slights poor Sizars are sometimes subject to in 
our seats of learning — exchanged their Alma Mater 
for the camp ; perishing, one by climate, and one on 
the plains of Salamanca : — Le G , sanguine, vola- 
tile, sweet-natured ; F , dogged, faithful, antici- 

pative of insult, warm-hearted, with something of the 
old Roman height about him. 

Fine, frank-hearted Fr , the present master of 

Hertford, with Marmaduke T , mildest of Mission- 
aries — and both my good friends still — close the cata- 
logue of Grecians in my time. 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 

The human species, according to the best theory I 
can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the 
•men who horroiu^ and the men who lend. To these 
two original diversities may be reduced all those im- 
pertinent classifications of Gothic and Celtic tribes, 
white men, black men, red men. All the dwellers 
upon earth, " Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites," 
flock hither, and do naturally fall in with one or other 
of these primary distinctions. The infinite superiority 
of the former, which I choose to designate as the -great 
race^ is discernible in their figui-e, port, and a certain 
instinctive sovereignty. The latter are born degraded, 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 45 

" He shall serve his brethren." There is something in 
the air of one of this cast, lean and suspicious ; con- 
trasting with the open, trusting, generous manners of 
the other. 

Observe who have been the greatest borrowers of all 
ages — Alcibiades — Falstaif — Sir Richard Steele — 
our late incomparable Brinsley — what a family like- 
ness in all four I 

What a careless, even deportment hath your bor- 
rower ! what rosy gills ! what a beautifid reliance 
on Providence doth he manifest, — taking no more 
thought than lilies ! What contempt for money, — > 
accounting it (yours and mine especially) no better 
than dross ! What a liberal confounding of those 
pedantic distinctions of meiim and tuum ! or rather, 
what a noble simplification of language (beyond 
Tooke), resolving these supposed opposites into one 
clear, intelligible pronoun adjective ! — What near ap- 
proaches doth he make to the primitive community^ — 
to the extent of one-half of the principle at least. 

He is the true taxer who " calleth all the world up 
to be taxed ; " and the distance is as vast between him 
and one of us, as subsisted between the Augustan 
Majesty and the poorest obolary Jew that paid it 
tribute-pittance at Jerusalem ! — His exactions, too, 
have such a cheerfal, voluntary air ! So far removed 
from your sour parochial or state-gatherers, — those 
inkhorn varlets, who carry their want of welcome in 
their faces ! He cometh to you with a smile, and 
troubleth you with no receipt ; confining himself to no 
set season. Every day is his Candlemas, or his Feast 
of Holy Michael. He applieth the lene tormentum of a 
pleasant look to your purse, — which to that gentle 



46 THE TWO EACES OF MEN. 

warmtli expands lier silken leaves, as naturally as the 
cloak of the traveller, for which sun and wind con- 
tended ! He is the true Propontic which never ebbeth ! 
The sea which taketh handsomely at each man's hand. 
In vain the victim, whom he delighteth to honor, 
struggles with destiny ; he is in the net. Lend there- 
fore cheerfully, O man ordained to lend — that thou 
lose not in the end, with thy worldly penny, the rever- 
sion promi&ed. Combine not preposterously in thine 
own person the penalties of Lazarus and of Dives ! — 
but, when thou seest the proper authority coming, meet 
it smilingly, as it were half-way. Come, a handsome 
sacrifice ! See how light he makes of it I Strain not 
courtesies with a noble enemy. 

Reflections like the foregoing were forced upon my 
mind by the death of my old friend, Ralph Bigod, Esq., 
who parted this life, on Wednesday evening; dying, 
as he had lived, without much trouble. He boasted 
himself a descendant from mighty ancestors of that 
name, who heretofore held ducal dignities in this realm. 
In his actions and sentiments he belied not the stock to 
which he pretended. Early in life he found himself 
invested with ample revenues ; which, with that noble 
disinterestedness which I have noticed as inherent in 
men of the great raee^ he took almost immediate meas- 
ures entirely to dissipate and bring to nothing ; for 
there is something revolting in the idea of a king hold- 
ing a private purse ; and the thoughts of Bigod were 
all regal. Thus furnished by the very act of disfurnish- 
ment; getting rid of the cumbersome luggage of riches, 
more apt (as one sings) 

To slacken virtue, and abate her edge, 

Than prompt her to do aught mny merit praise. 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 47 

he set forth, like some Alexander, upon his great enter- 
prise, " borrowing and to borrow ! " 

In his periegesis, or triumphant progress throughout 
this island, it has been calculated that he laid a tythe 
part of the inhabitants under contribution. I reject 
this estimate as greatly exaggerated : — but having had 
the honor of accompanying my friend divers times, in 
his perambulations about this vast city, I own I was 
greatly struck at first with the prodigious number of 
faces we met, who claimed a sort of respectful acquaint- 
ance with us. He was one day so obliging as to ex- 
plain the phenomenon. It seems, these were his trib- 
utaries ; feeders of his exchequer ; gentlemen, his 
good friends (as he was pleased to express himself,) to 
whom he had occasionally been beholden for a loan. 
Their multitudes did no way disconcert him. He 
rather took a pride in numbering them ; and, with 
Comus, seemed pleased to be '' stocked with so fair a 
herd." 

With such sources, it was a wonder how^ he contrived 
to keep his treasury always empty. He did it by force 
of an aphorism, which he had often in his mouth, that 
" money kept longer than three days' stinks." So he 
made use of it while it was fresh. A good part he 
drank away (for he was an excellent toss-pot) ; some 
he gave away, the rest he threw away, literally tossing 
and hurling it violently from him — as boys do burrs, 
or as if it had been infectious, — into ponds, or ditches, 
or deep holes, inscrutable cavities of the earth ; or he 
would bury it (where he would never seek it again) 
by a river's side under some bank, which (he would 
facetiously observe) paid no interest — but out away 
from him it must go peremptorily, as Hagar's offspring 



48 THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 

into the wilderness, while it was sweet. He never 
missed it. The streams were perennial which fed his 
fisc. When new supplies became necessary ; the first 
person that had the felicity to fall in with him, friend 
or stranger, was sure to contribute to the deficiency. 
For Bigod had an undeniable way with him. He had 
a cheerful, open exterior, a quick jovial eye, a bald 
forehead, just touched with gray (^cana fides^. He 
anticipated no excuse, and found none. And, waiving 
for a while my theory as to the great race^ I would put 
it to the most untheorizing reader, who may at times 
have disposable coin in his pocket, whether it is not 
more repugnant to the kindliness of his nature to reftise 
such a one as I am describing, then to say no to a poor 
petitionary rogue (your bastard borrower), who, by his 
mumping visnomy, tells you, that he expects nothing 
better ; and, therefore, whose preconceived notions and 
expectations you do in reality so much less shock in the 
refusal. 

When I think of this man ; his fiery glow of heart ; 
his swell of feeling ; how magnificent, how ideal he 
was; how great at the midnight hour; and when I 
compare with him the companions with whom I have 
associated since, I ^rudo-e the savincr of a few idle 
ducats, and think that I am fallen into the society of 
lenders^ and little men. 

To one like Elia, whose treasures are rather cased in 
leather covers than closed in iron coffers, there is a 
class of alienators more formidable than that which I 
have touched upon ; I mean your horroivers of hooks — 
those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry 
of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. There is 
Comberbatch, matchless in his depredations ! 



THE TWO RACES OF MEN. 49 

That foul gap in tlie bottom shelf facing you, like a 
great eye-tooth knocked out — ■ (you are now with me 

in my little back study in Bloomsbury, reader !) 

with the huge Switzer-like tomes on each side (like the 
Gruildhall giants, in their reformed posture, guardant 
of nothing) once held the tallest of my folios. Opera 
Bonavfntarce^ choice and massy divinity, to which its 
two supporters (school divinity also, but of a lessor 
calibre, — Bellarmine, and Holy Thomas), showed but 
as dwarfs, — itself an Ascapart ! — that Comberbatch 
abstracted upon the faith of a theory he holds, which 
is more easy, I confess, for me to suffer by than to 
refate, namely, that " the title to property in a book 
(my Bonaventure, for instance), is in exact ratio to the 
claimant's powers of understanding and appreciating 
the same." Should he go on acting upon this theory, 
which of our shelves is safe ? 

The slight vacuum in the left-hand case — two shelves 
from the ceiling — scarcely distinguishable but by the 
quick eye of a loser — was whilom the commodious 
resting-place of Brown on Urn Burial. C. will hardly 
allege that he knows more about that treatise than I do, 
who introduced it to him, and was, indeed, the first 
(of the moderns) to discover its beauties — but so have 
I known a foolish lover to praise his mistress in the 
presence of a rival more qualified to carry her off than 
himself. Just below, Dodsley's dramas want their 
Fourth volume, where Vittoria Corombona is. The 
remaining nine are as distasteful as Priapa's refrise 
sons, when the Fates horroived Hector. Here stood 
the Anatomy of Melancholy, in sober state. There 
loitered the Complete Angler ; quiet as in life, by 
some stream side. In yonder nook, John Buncle, a 



VOL. III. 



50 THE TWO EACES OF MEN. 

widower-volume, with " eyes closed," mourns his rav- 
ished mate. 

One justice I must do my friend, that if he some- 
times, like the sea, sweeps away a treasure, at another 
time, sea-lilve, he throws up as rich an equivalent to 
match it. I have a small under-collection of this 
nature (my friend's gatherings in his various calls), 
picked up, he has forgotten at what odd places, and 
deposited with as little memory at mine. I take in 
these orphans, the twice-deserted. These proselytes 
of the gate are welcome as the true Hebrews. There 
they stand in conjunction ; natives, and naturalized. 
The latter seem as little disposed to inquire out their 
true lineage as I am. — I charge no warehouse-room 
for these deodands, nor shall ever put myself to the 
ungentlemanly trouble of advertising a sale of them to 
pay expenses. 

To lose a volume to C. carries some sense and mean- 
ing in it. You are sure that he will make one hearty 
meal on your viands, if he can give no account of the 
platter after it. But what moved thee, wayward, spite- 
ful K., to be so importunate to carry off with thee, in 
spite of tears and adjurations to thee to forbear, the 
Letters of that princely woman, the thrice noble Mar- 
garet Newcastle ? — knowing at the time, and knowing 
that I knew also, thou most assuredly wouldst never 
turn over one leaf of the illustrious folio : — what but 
the mere spirit of contradiction, and childish love of 
getting the better of thy friend ? — Then, worst cut of 
all ! to transport it with thee to the Galilean land — 

Unworthy land to harbor such a sweetness, 

A virtue in which all ennobling thoughts dwelt, 

Pure thoughts, kind thoughts, high thoughts, her sex's wonder! 



NEW YEAR'S EVE. 51 

hadst tliou not thy play-books, and books of jests 

and fancies, about thee, to keep thee merry, even as 
thou keepest all companies with thy quips and mirthful 
tales ? Child of the Green-room, it was unkindly done 
of thee. Thy wife, too, that part-French, better-part 
Englishwoman ! — that she could fix upon no other 
treatise to bear away, in kindly token of remembering 
us, than the works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brook — 
of which no Frenchman, nor woman of France, Italy, 
or England, was ever by nature constituted to compre- 
hend a tittle ! ■ — Was there not Zimmerman on Solitude ? 
Reader, if haply thou art blessed with a moderate 
collection, be shy of showing it ; or if thy heart over- 
floweth to lend them, lend thy books ; but let it be to 
such a one as S. T. C. — he will return them (gener- 
ally anticipating the time appointed) with usury ; en- 
riched with annotations tripling their value. I have 
had experience. Many are these precious MSS. of his 
— (in matter oftentimes, and almost in quantity not 
unfrequently, vying with the originals) in no very 
clerkly hand — legible in my Daniel ; in old Burton ; 
in Sir Thomas Browne : and those abstruser coo-ita- 
tions of the Greville, now, alas ! wandering in Pagan 
lands. — I counsel thee, shut not thy heart, nor thy 
library, against S. T. C. 



NEW YEAR'S EVE. 



Every man hath two birthdays : two days, at least, 
in every year, which set him upon revolving the lapse 



52 NEW YEAR'S EVE. 

of time, as it affects his mortal duration. The one is 
that which in an especial manner he termeth his. In 
the gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom 
of solemnizing our proper birthday hath nearly passed 
away, or is left to children, who reflect nothing a^ all 
about the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond 
cake and oranoe. But the birth of a New Year is of 
an interest too wide to be pretermitted by king or cob- 
bler. No one ever regarded the first of January with 
indifference. It is that from which all date their time, 
and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our 
common Adam. 

Of all sound cf all bells — (bells, the music nighest 
bordering upon heaven) — most solemn and touching 
is the peal which rings out the Old Year. I never 
hear it without a gathering-up of my mind to a con- 
centration of all the images that have been diffused 
over the past twelvemonth ; all I have done or suffered, 
performed or neglected — in that regretted time. I 
begin to know its worth, as when a person dies. It 
takes a personal color ; nor was it a poetical flight in a 
contemporary, when he exclaimed, 

I saw the skirts of the departing Year, 

It is no more than what in sober sadness every one 
of us seems to be conscious of, in that awful leave- 
taking. I am sure I felt it, and all felt it with me, 
last night ; though some of my companions affected 
rather to manifest an exhilaration at the birth of the 
coming year, than any very tender regrets for the 
decease of its predecessor. But I am none of those 
who — 

Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest. 



NEW YEAR'S EVE. 53 

I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties ; new 
books, new faces, new years — from some mental twist 
which makes it difficult in me to face the prospective. 
I have almost ceased to hope ; and am sanguine only 
in the prospects of other (former) years. I plunge 
into foregone visions and conclusions. I encounter 
pellmell with past disappointments. I am armor- 
proof agamst old discouragements. I forgive, or over- 
come in fancy, old adversaries. I play over again for 
lovCy as the gamesters phrase it, games, for which I 
once paid so dear. I would scarce now have any of 
those untoward accidents and events of my life re- 
versed. 1 would no more alter them than the incidents 
of some well-contrived novel. Methinks it is better 
that I should have pined away seven of my goldenest 
years, when I was thrall to the fair hair, and fairer 
eyes, of Alice W — ^n, than that so passionate a love- 
adventure should be lost. It was better that our family 
should have missed that legacy, which old Dorrell 
cheated us of, than that I should have at this moment 
two thousand pounds in banco, and be without the idea 
of that specious old rogue. 

In a degree beneath manhood, it is my infirmity to 
look back upon those early days. Do I advance a 
paradox, when I say, that, skipping over the interven- 
tion of forty years, a man may have leave to love him- 
self, without the imputation of self-love ? _ 

If I know aught of myself, no one whose mind is 
introspective — and mine is painfully so — can have a 
less respect for his present identity, than I have for the 
man Elia. I know him to be light, and vain, and 
humorsome ; a notorious . . . ; addicted to .... ; 
averse from counsel, neither taking it nor offering it ; 



54 NEW YEAE'S EVE. 

— ... besides ; a stammering buffoon ; what you 
will ; lay it on, and spare not ; I subscribe to it all, 
and much more than thou canst be willing to lay at his 
door — but for the child Eha, that " other me," there, 
in the backo-round — I must take leave to cherish the 
remembrance of that young master — with as little 
reference, I protest, to this stupid changeling of iive- 
and-forty, as if it had been a child of some other house, 
and not of my parents. I can cry over its patient 
smallpox at five, and rougher medicaments. I can 
lay its poor fevered head upon the sick pillow at 
Christ's, and wake with it in surprise at the gentle 
posture of maternal tenderness hanging over it, that 
unknown had watched its sleep. I know how it 
shrank from any the least color of falsehood. God 
help thee, Elia, how art thou changed ! — Thou art 
sophisticated. — I know how honest, how courageous 
(for a weakling) it was — how religious, how imagina- 
tive, how hopeful ! From what have I not fallen, if 
the child I remember was indeed myself, — and not 
some dissembling guardian, presenting a false identity, 
to give the rule to my unpractised steps, and regulate 
the tone of my moral being ! 

That I am fond of indulging, beyond a hope of sym- 
pathy, in such retrospection, may be the symptom of 
some sickly idiosyncrasy. Or is it owing to another 
cause ; simply, that being without wife or family, I 
have not learned to project myself enough out of my- 
self ; and having no offspring of my own to dally with, 
I turn back upon memory, and adopt my own early 
idea, as my heir and favorite ? If these speculations 
seem fantastical to thee, reader — (a busy man, per- 
chance), if I tread out of the way of thy sympathy, 



NEW YEAR'S EVE. '55 

and am singularly conceited only, I retire, impenetrable 
to ridicule, under the phantom-cloud of Elia. 

The elders, with w^hom I was brought up, were of a 
character not likely to let slip the sacred observance of 
any old institution ; and the ringing out of the Old 
Year was kept by them with circumstances of peculiar 
ceremony. — In those days the sound of those midnight 
chimes, though it seemed to raise hilarity in all around 
me, never failed to bring a train of pensive imagery 
into my fancy. Yet I then scarce conceived what it 
meant, or thought of it as a reckoning that concerned 
me. Not childhood alone, but the young man till 
thirty, never feels practically that he is mortal. He 
knows it indeed, and, if need were, he could preach a 
homily on the fragility of life ; but he brings it not 
home to himself, any more than in a hot June we can 
appropriate to our imagination the freezing days of 
December. But now, shall I confess a truth ? — I feel 
these audits but too powerfully. I begin to count the 
probabilities of my duration, and to grudge at the ex- 
penditure of moments and shortest periods, like misers' 
farthings. In proportion as the years both lessen and 
shorten, I set more count upon their periods, and would 
fain lay my ineffectual finger upon the spoke of the 
great wheel. I am not content to pass away " like 
a weaver's shuttle." Those metaphors solace me not, 
nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I 
cai'e not to be carried with the tide, that smoothly 
bears human life to eternity ; and reluct at the inevi- 
table course of destiny. I am in love with this green 
earth ; the face of town and country ; the unspeakable 
rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets. I 
would set up my tabernacle here. I am content to 



66 x\EW YEAR'S EVE. 

stand still at the age to wliicli I am arrived ; I, and my 
friends ; to be no younger, no richer, no handsomer. I 
-do not want to be weaned by age ; or drop, like mel- 
low fruit, as they say, into the grave. — Any alteration, 
on this earth of mine, in diet or in lodging, puzzles and 
discomposes me. My household-gods plant a terrible 
fixed foot, and are not rooted up without blood. They 
do not willingly seek Lavinian shores. A new state of 
being staggers me. 

Sun, and sky, and breeze, and solitary walks, and 
summer holidays, and the greenness of fields, and the 
delicious juices of meats and fishes, and society, and the 
cheerful glass, and candlelight, and fireside conversa- 
tions, and innocent vanities, and jests, and ironi/ itself 
— do these things go out with life ? 

Can a ghost laugh, or shake his gaunt sides, when 
you are pleasant with him ? 

And you, my midnight darlings, my Folios ! must I 
part with the intense delight of having you (huge arm- 
fuls) in my embraces ? Must knowledge come to me, 
if it come at all, by some awkward experiment of in- 
tuition, and no longer by this familiar process of read- 
ing? 

Shall I enjoy friendships there, wanting the smiling 
indications which point me to them here, — the recog- 
nizable face — the " sweet assurance of a look " - — ? 

In winter this intolerable disinclination to dying — 
to give it its mildest name — does more especially haunt 
and beset me. In a genial August noon, beneath a 
sweltering sky, death is almost problematic. At those 
times do such poor snakes as myself enjoy an immor- 
tality. Then we expand and bourgeon. Then we are 
as strong again, as valiant ao^ain, as wise again, and a 



NEW YEAR'S EVE. 57 

great deal taller. The blast that nips and shrinks me, 
puts me in thoughts of death. All things allied to 
the insubstantial, wait upon that master-feeling ; cold, 
numbness, dreams, perplexity ; moonlight itself, with 
its shadowy and spectral appearances, — that cold ghost 
of the sun, or Phoebus' sickly sister, like that innutri- 
tions one denounced in the Canticles : — I am none of 
her minions — I hold with the Persian. 

Whatsoever thwarts,' or puts me out of my way, 
brings death into my mind. All partial evils, like 
humors, run into that capital plague-sore. — I have 
heard some profess an indifference to life. Such hail 
the end of their existence as a port of refuge ; and 
speak of the grave as of some soft arms, in which they 
may slumber as on a pillow. Some have wooed death 
but out upon thee, I say, thou foul, ugly phan- 
tom I I detest, abhor, execrate, and (with Friar John) 
give thee to sixscore thousand devils, as in no instance 
to be excused or tolerated, but shunned as an universal 
viper ; to be branded, proscribed, and spoken evil of ! 
In no way can I be brought to digest thee, thou thin, 
melancholy Privation^ or more frightful and confound- 
ing Positive ! 

Those antidotes, prescribed against the fear of thee, 
are altogether frigid and insulting, like thyself. For 
what satisfaction hath a man, that he shall " lie down 
with kings and emperors in death," who in his lifetime 
never greatly coveted the society of such bedfellows ? 

— or, forsooth, that " so shall the fairest face appear? " 

— why, to comfort me, mast Alice W — n be a goblin ? 
More than all, I conceive disgust at those impertinent 
and misbecoming familiarities, inscribed upon your 
ordinary tombstones. Every dead man must take upon 



58 NEW YEAR'S EVE. 

himself to be lecturing me with his odious truism, that 
" Such as he now is I must shortly be." Not so shortly, 
friend, perhaps as thou imaginest. In the mean time I 
am alive. I move about. I am worth twenty of thee. 
Know thy betters ! Thy New Years' days are past. I 
survive, a jolly candidate for 1821. Another cup of 
wine — and while that turncoat bell, that just now 
mournfully chanted the obsequies of 1820 departed, with 
changed notes lustily rings in a successor, let us attune 
to its peal the song made on a like occasion, by hearty, 
cheerful Mr. Cotton. 

THE NEW YEAR. 

Hark, the cock crows, and yon bright star 

Tells us, the day himself s not far; 

And see where, breaking from the night, 

He gilds the western hills with light. 

With him old Janus doth appear, 

Peeping into the future year. 

With such a look as seems to say, 

The prospect is not good that way. 

Thus do we rise ill sights to see, 

And 'gainst ourselves to prophesy; 

When the prophetic fear of things 

A more tormenting mischief brings, 

More full of soiil-tormenting gall 

Than direst mischiefs can befall. 

But stay ! but stay ! methinks my sight, 

Better inform' d by clearer light, 

Discerns sereneness in that brow, 

That all contracted seem'dbut now. 

His revers'd face may show distaste. 

And frown upon the ills are past; 

But that which this way looks is clear. 

And smiles upon the New-born Year. 

He looks too from a place so high, 

The Year lies open to his eye; 

And all the moments open are 

To the exact discoverer. 

Yet more and more he smiles upon 

The happy revolution. 



NEW YEAR'S EVE. 

Why should we then suspect or fear 

The influences of a year, 

So smiles upon us the first morn, 

And speaks us good so soon as born ? 

Plague on't! the last was ill enough. 

This cannot but make better proof; 

Or, at the worst, as we brush' d through 

The last, why so we may this too; 

And then the next in reason shou'd 

Be superexcellently good : 

For the worst ills (we daily see) 

Have no more perpetuity 

Than the best fortunes that do fall; 

Which also bring us wherewithal 

Longer their being to support. 

Than those do of the other sort ; 

And who has one good year in three, 

And yet repines at destiny, 

Appears ungrateful in the case, 

And merits not the good he has. 

Then let us welcome the New Guest 

With lusty brimmers of the best : 

Mirth always should Good Fortune meet, 

Ajid renders e'en Disaster sweet: 

And though the Princess turn her back. 

Let us but line ourselves with sack. 

We better shall by far hold out, 

Till the next Year she face about. 



How say you, reader — do not these verses smack of 
the rough magnanimity of the old English vein ? Do 
they not fortify like a cordial ; enlarging the heart, and 
productive of sweet blood, and generous spirits, in the 
concoction ? Where be those puling fears of death, 
just now expressed or affected ? — Passed like a cloud 
— absorbed in the purging sunlight of clear poetry — 
clean washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon, your 
only Spa for these hypochondries — And now another 
cup of the generous I and a merry New Year, and 
many of them to you all, my masters ! 



60 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 

" A CLEAR fire, a clean hearth, and the rigor of the 
game." This was the celebrated wish of old Sarah 
Battle (now with God), who, next to her devotions, 
loved a good game of whist. She was none of your 
lukewarm gamesters, your half-and-half players, who 
have no objection to take a hand, if you want one to 
make up a rubber; who affirm that they have no 
pleasure in winning ; that they like to win one game 
and lose another ; that they can while away an hour 
very agreeably at a card-table, but are indifferent 
whether they play or no ; and will desire an adversary, 
who has slipped a wrong card, to take it up and play 
another. These insufferable trifles are the curse of a 
table. One of these flies will spoil a whole pot. Of 
such it may be said that they do not play at cards, but 
only play at playing at them. 

Sarah Battle was none of that breed. She detested 
them, as I do, from her heart and soul, and would not, 
save upon a striking emergency, willingly seat herself 
at the same table with them. She loved a thorough- 
paced partner, a determined enemy. She took, and 
gave, no concessions. She hated favors. She never 
made a revoke, nor ever passed it over in her adversary 
without exacting the utmost forfeiture. She fought a 
good fight : cut and thrust. She held not her good 
sword (her cards) " like a dancer." She sate bolt up- 
right ; and neither showed you her cards, nor desired 
to see yours. All people have their blind side — their 
superstitions ; and I have heard her declare, under the 
rose, that hearts was her favorite suit. 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 61 

I never in my life — and I knew Sarali Battle many 
of the best years of it — saw her take out her snufPbox 
when it was her turn to play ; or snuff a candle in the 
middle of a game ; or ring for a servant, till it was 
fairly over. She never introduced, or connived at, 
miscellaneous conversation during its process. As she 
emphatically observed, cards were cai^ds ; and if I ever 
saw unmingled distaste in her fine last-century counte- 
nance, it was at the airs of a young gentleman of a 
literary turn, who had been with difficulty persuaded 
to take a hand ; and who, in his excess of candor, de- 
clared, that he thought there was no harm in unbend- 
ing the mind now and then, after serious studies, in 
recreations of that kind ! She could not bear to have 
her noble occupation, to which she wound up her facul- 
ties, considered in that light. It was her business, her 
duty, the thing she came into the world to do, — and 
she did it. She unbent her mind afterwards, over a 
book. 

Pope was her favorite author; his " Rape of the 
Lock " her favorite work. She once did me the favor 
to play over with me (with the cards) his celebrated 
game of Ombre in that poem ; and to explain to me 
how far it agreed with, and in what points it would be 
found to difFer from, tradrille. Her illustrations were 
apposite and j^oignant ; and I had the pleasure of send- 
ing the substance of them to Mr. Bowles ; but I sup- 
pose they came too late to be inserted among his in- 
genious notes upon that author. 

Quadrille, she has often told me, was her first love ; 
but whist had engaged her maturer esteem. The 
former, she said, was showy and specious, and likely to 
allure young persons. The uncertainty and quick 



62 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 

shifting of partners — a thing which the constancy of 
whist abhors ; — the dazzhng supremacy and regal in 
vestiture of Spadille — absurd, as she justly observed, 
in the pure aristocracy of whist, where his crown and 
garter give him no proper power above his brother- 
nobility of the Aces ; — the giddy vanity, so taking to 
the inexperienced, of playing alone ; above all, the 
overpowering attractions of a Sans Prendre Vole, — to 
the triumph of which there is certamly nothing parallel 
or approaching, in the contingencies of whist ; — all 
these, she would say, make quadrille a game of captiva- 
tion to the young and enthusiastic. But whist was the 
solider game : that was her word. It was a long meal ; 
not, like quadrille, a feast of snatches. One or two 
rubbers might coextend in duration with an evening. 
Tliey gave time to form rooted friendships, to cultivate 
steady enmities. She despised the chance-started, ca- 
pricious, and ever fluctuating alliances of the other. 
.The skirmishes of quadrille, she would say, reminded 
her of the petty ephemeral embroilments of the little 
Italian states, depicted by Machiavel : perpetually 
changing postures and connections ; bitter foes to-day, 
sugared darlings to-morrow ; kissing and scratching in 
a breath ; — - but the wars of whist were comparable to 
the long, steady, deep-rooted, rational antipathies of 
the great French and English nations. 

A grave simplicity was what she chiefly admired in 
her favorite game. There was nothing silly in it, 
like the nob in cribbage — nothing superfluous. No 
flushes — that most irrational of all pleas that a reason- 
able being can set up ; — that any one should claim 
four by virtue of holding cards of the same mark and 
color, without reference to the playing of the game, or 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 63 

the individual worth or pretensions of the cards them- 
selves ! She held this to be a solecism ; as pitiful an 
ambition at cards as alliteration is in authorship. She 
despised superficiality, and looked deeper than the colors 
of things. — Suits were soldiers, she would say, and 
must have a uniformity of array to distinguish them ; 
but what should we say to a foolish squire, who should 
claim a merit from dressing up his tenantry in red 
jackets, that never were to be marshalled — never to 
take the field ? — She even wished that whist were 
more simple than it is ; and, in my mind, would have 
stripped it of some appendages, which in the state of 
human frailty, may be venially, and even commend- 
ably, allowed of. She saw no reason for the deciding 
of the trump by the turn of the card. Why not one 
suit always trumps ? — Why two colors, when the 
mark of the suits would have sufiiciently distinguished 
them without it? 

" But the eye, my dear Madam, is agreeably re- 
freshed with the variety. Man is not a creature of 
pure reason — he must have his senses delightfully 
appealed to. We see it in Roman Catholic countries, 
where the music and the paintings draw in many to 
worship, whom your Quaker spmt of unsensualizing 
would have kept out. — You yourself have a pretty 
collection of paintings, — but confess to me, whether, 
walking in your gallery at Sandham, among those 
clear Vandykes, or among the Paul Potters in the 
anteroom, you ever felt your bosom glow with an 
elegant delight, at all comparable to that you have it 
in your power to experience most evenings over a well- 
arranged assortment of the court-cards ? — the pretty 
antic habits, like heralds in a procession — the gay 



64 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 

triumph-assuring scarlets — the contrasting deadly-kill- 
ing sables — the ' hoary majesty of spades ' — Pam in 
all his glory ! 

" All these might be dispensed with; and with their 
naked names upon the drab pasteboard, the game 
might go on very well, pictureless. But the beauty 
of cards would be extinguished forever. Stripped of 
all that is imaginative in them, they must degenerate 
into mere gambling. Imagine a dull deal board, or 
drum-head, to spread them on, instead of that nice 
verdant carpet (next to Nature's), fittest arena for 
those courtly combatants to play their gallant jousts 
and tourneys in ! — Exchange those delicately turned 
ivory markers — (work of Chinese artist, unconscious 
of their symbol, — or as profanely slighting their true 
application as the arrantest Ephesian journeyman that 
turned out those little shrines for. the goddess) — ex- 
change them for little bits of leather (our ancestors' 
money), or chalk and a slate ! '' 

The old lady, with a smile, confessed the soundness 
of my logic ; and to her approbation of my arguments 
on her favorite topic that evening, I have always 
fancied myself indebted for the legacy of a curious 
cribbage-board, made of the finest Sienna marble, 
which her maternal uncle (old Walter Plumer, whom 
I have elsewhere celebrated,) brought with him from 
Florence; — this, and a trifle of five hundred pounds, 
came to me at her death. 

The former bequest (which I do not least value) 1 
have kept with religious care ; though she herself, to 
confess a truth, was never greatly taken with cribbage. 
It was an essentially vulgar game, I have heard her 
say, — disputing with her uncle, who was very partial 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 65 

to it. She could never heartily bring her mouth to 
pronounce " Cro " — or " That's a go,''' She called it 
an ungrammatical game. The pegging teased her. I 
once knew her to forfeit a rubber (a five-dollar stake), 
because she would not take advantage of the turn-up 
knave, which would have given it her, but which she 
must have claimed by the disgraceful tenure of declar- 
ing '-'• two for his heels.'' There is something extremely 
s:enteel in this sort of self-denial. Sarah Battle was a 
D;entlewoman born. 

Piquet she held the best game at the cards for two 
persons, though she would ridicule the pedantry of the 
terms, — such as pique — repique — the capot, — they 
savored (she thought) of affectation. But games for 
two, or even three, she never greatly cared for. She 
loved the quadrate, or square. She would argue thus : 
— Cards are warfare : the ends are gain, with glory. 
But cards are war, in disguise of a sport : when single 
adversaries encounter, the ends proposed are too pal- 
pable. By themselves, it is too close a fight ; with 
spectators, it is not much bettered. No looker-on can 
be mterested, except for a bet, and then it is a mere 
affair of money ; he cares not for your luck sympathetr- 
ically^ or for your play. — Three are still worse ; a 
mere naked war of every man against every man, as in 
cribbage, without league or alliance ; or a rotation of 
petty and contradictory interests, a succession of heart- 
less leagues, and not much more hearty infractions of 
them, as in tradrille. — But in square games (^she meant 
whist^^ all that is possible to be attained in card-playing 
is accomplished. There are the incentives of profit 
with honor, common to every species, — though the 
latter can be but very imperfectly enjoyed in those 

voii. III. 5 



66 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 

other games, where the spectator is only feebly a par- 
ticipator. But the parties in whist are spectators and 
principals too. They are a theatre to themselves, and 
a looker-on is not wanted. He is rather worse than 
nothing, and an impertinence. Whist abhors neutral- 
ity, or interests beyond its sphere. You glory in some 
sui^3rising stroke of skill or fortune, not because a cold 

— or even an interested — bystander witnesses it, but 
because your partner sympathizes in the contingency. 
You win for two. You triumph for two. Two are 
exalted. Two ao-ain are mortified : which divides their 
disgrace, as the conjunction doubles (by taking off the 
invidiousness) your glories. Two losing to two are 
better reconciled, than one to one in that close butch- 
ery. The hostile feeling is weakened by multiplying 
the channels. War becomes a civil game. — By such 
reasonings as these the old lady was accustomed to 
defend her favorite pastime. 

No inducement could ever prevail upon her to play 
at any game, where chance entered into the compo- 
sition, for nothing. Chance, she would argue, — and 
here again, admire the subtlety of her conclusion, — 
chance is nothing, but where something else depends 
upon it. It is obvious that cannot be glory. What 
rational cause of exultation could it give to a man to 
turn up size ace a hundred times together by himself? 
or before spectators, where no stake was depend mg ? 

— Make a lottery of a hundred thousand tickets with 
but one fortunate number, — and what possible princi- 
ple of our nature, except stupid wonderment, could it 
gratify to gain that number as many times successively, 
without a prize ? Therefore she disliked the mixture 
of chance in backgammon, where it was not played 



MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 67 

for money. She called it foolish, and those people 
idiots, who were taken with a lucky hit under such cir- 
cumstances. Games of pure skill were as little to her 
fancy. Played for a stake, they were a mere system 
of overreaching. Played for glory, they were a mere 
setting of one man's wit — his memory, or combina- 
tion faculty rather — against another's ; like a mock 
engagement at a review, bloodless and profitless. She 
could not conceive a game wanting the spritely infusion 
of chance, the handsome excuses of good fortune. Two 
people playing at chess in a corner of a room, whilst 
whist was stirring in the centre, would inspire her with 
insufferable horror and ennui. Those well-cut simili- 
tudes of Castles, and Knights, the imagery of the board, 
she w^ould argue, (and I think in this case justly,) 
were entirely misplaced and senseless. Those hard 
head-contests can in no instance ally with the fancy. 
They reject form and color. A pencil and dry slate 
(she used to say) were the proper arena for such com- 
batants. 

To those puny objectors against cards, as nurturing 
the bad passions, she would retort, that man is a gam- 
ing animal. He must be always trying to get the 
better in something or other ; — that this passion can 
scarcely be more safely expended than upon a game at 
cards ; that cards are a temporary illusion ; in truth, 
a mere drama ; for we do but play at being mightily 
concerned, where a few idle shillings are at stake, yet, 
during the illusion, we are as mightily concerned as 
those whose stake is crowns and kingdoms. They are 
a sort of dream-fighting ; much ado ; great battling, 
and little bloodshed ; mighty means for disproportioned 
ends ; quite as diverting, and a great deal more innox- 



68 MRS. BATTLE'S OPINIONS ON WHIST. 

ious, than many of those more serious games of life 
which men play, without esteeming them to be such. 

With great deference to the old lady's judgment in 
these matters, I think I have experienced some moments 
in my life, when playing at cards for nothing has even 
been agreeable. When I am in sickness, or not in the 
best spirits, I sometimes call for the cards, and play a 
game at piquet for love with my cousin Bridget — 
Bridget Elia. 

I grant there is something sneaking in it ; but with 
a toothache, or a sprained ankle, — when you are sub- 
dued and humble, — you are glad to put up with an 
inferior spring of action. 

There is such a thing in nature, I am convinced, as 
dck wfdst. 

I grant it is not the highest style of man — I depre- 
cate the manes of Sarah Battle — she lives not, alas! 
to whom I should apologize. 

At such times, those terms^ which my old friend 
objected to, come in as something admissible. I love 
to get a tierce or a quatorze, though they mean noth- 
ing. I am subdued to an inferior interest. Those 
shadows of winnino; amuse me. 

That last game I had with my sweet cousin (I 
capotted her) — (dare I tell thee, how foolish I am ?) 
— I wished it might have lasted forever, though we 
gained nothing, and lost nothing ; though it was a mere 
shade of play, I would be content to go on in that idle 
folly forever. The pipkin should be ever boiling, that 
was to prepare the .gentle lenitive to my foot, which 
Bridget was doomed to apply after the game was over ; 
and, as I do not much relish appliances, there it should 
ever bubble. Bridget and I should be ever playing. 



A CHAPTER ON EARS. 69 



A CHAPTER ON EARS. 

I HAVE no ear. — 

Mistake me not, reader — nor imagine that I am by 
nature destitute of those exterior twin appendages, 
hanging ornaments, and (architectiirallj speaking) 
handsome volutes to the human capitaL Better my 
mother had never borne me. I am, I think, rather 
dehcately than copiously provided with those conduits ; 
and I feel no disposition to envy the mule for his 
plenty, or the mole for her exactness, in those ingen- 
ious labyrinthine inlets — those indispensable side-intel- 
li2:encers. 

Neither have I incurred, or done anything to incur, 
with Defoe, that hideous disfigurement, which con- 
strained him to draw upon assurance — to feel " quite 
unabashed," and at ease upon that article. I was 
never, I thank my stars, in the pillory ; nor, if I read 
them aright, is it within the compass of my destiny, 
that I ever should be. 

When therefore I say that I have no ear, you will 
understand me to mean — for music. To say that this 
heart never melted at the concord of sweet sounds, 
would be a foul self-libel. " Water parted from the 
sea " never fails to move it strangely. So does " In 
infancy.'''' But they were used to be sung at her harp- 
sichord (the old-fashioned instrument in vogue in those 
days) by a gentlewoman — the gentlest, sure, that ever 
merited the appellation — the sweetest — why should I 

hesitate to name Mrs. S , once the blooming Fanny 

Weatheral of the Temple — who had power to thrill 



70 A CHAPTER ON EARS. 

the soul of Elia, small imp as he was, even in his long 
coats ; and to make him glow, tremble, and blush with 
a passion, that not faintly indicated the dayspring of 
that absorbino; sentiment which was afterwards destined 
to overwhelm and subdue his nature quite for Alice 
W n. 

I even think that sentimentally I am disposed to 
harmony. But organically I am incapable of a tune. 
I have been practising " Ciod save the King " all my 
life ; whistling and humming of it over to myself in 
solitary corners ; and am not yet arrived, they tell me, 
within many quavers of it. Yet hath the loyalty of 
Elia never been impeached. 

I am not without suspicion, that I have an unde- 
veloped faculty of music within me. For thrumming, 
in my wild way, on my friend A.'s piano, the other 
morning, while he was engaged in an adjoining parlor, 
— on his return he was pleased to say, " he thought it 
could not he the maid ! " On his first surprise at hear- 
ing the keys touched in somewhat an airy and master- 
ftil way, not dreaming of me, his suspicions had lighted 
on Jenny. But a grace, snatched fi-om a superior 
refinement, soon convinced him that some bcdng — 
technically perhaps deficient, but higher informed from 
a principle common to all the fine arts — had swa^^ed 
the keys to a mood which Jenny, with all her (less 
cultivated) enthusiasm, could never have elicited from 
them. I mention this as a proof of my friend's pene- 
tration, and not with any view of disparaging Jenny. 

Scientifically I could never be made to understand 
(yet have I taken some pains) what a note in music 
is ; or how one note should differ from another. Much 
less in voices can I distinguish a soprano from a tenor. 



A CHAPTER ON EARS. 71 

Only sometimes the thorough-bass I contrive to guess 
at, from its being supereminently harsh and disagree- 
able. 1 tremble, however, for my misapplication of the 
simplest terms of that which I disclaim. While I pro- 
fess my ignorance, I scarce know what to say I am 
ignorant of. I hate, perhaps, by misnomers. Sostenuto 
and adagio stand in the like relation of obscurity to me ; 
and Sol^ Fa^ Mi, He, is as conjuring as Baralipton. 

It is hard to stand alone in an age like this, — (con- 
stituted to the quick and critical perception of all har- 
monious combinations, I verily believe, beyond all 
preceding ages, since Jubal stumbled upon the gamut,) 
to remain, as it were, singly unimpressible to the magic 
influences of an art, which is said to have such an 
especial stroke at soothing, elevating, and refining the 
passions. — Yet, rather than break the candid current 
of my confessions, I must avow to you, that I have re- 
ceived a great deal more pain than pleasure from this 
so cried-up faculty. 

I am constitutionally susceptible of noises. A car- 
penter's hammer, in a warm summer noon, will fret 
me into more than midsummer madness. But those 
unconnected, unset sounds are nothing to the measured 
malice of music. The ear is passive to those single 
strokes ; willingly enduring stripes while it hath no 
task to con. To music it cannot be passive. It will 
strive — mine at least will — 'spite of its inaptitude, 
to thrid the maze ; like an unskilled eye painfully por- 
ing upon hieroglyphics. I have sat through an Italian 
Opera, till, for sheer pain, and inexplicable anguish, I 
have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded 
streets, to solace myself with sounds, which I was not 
obliged to follow, and get rid of the distracting torment 



72 A CHAPTER ON EARS. 

of endless, fruitless, barren attention I I take refuge 
in the unpretending assemblage of honest common-life 
sounds ; — and the purgatory of the Enraged Musician 
becomes my paradise. 

I have sat at an Oratorio (that profanation of the 
purposes of the cheei-ful playhouse) watching the faces 
of the auditory in the pit (what a contrast to Hogarth's 
Laughing Audience !) immovable, or affecting some 
faint emotion — till (as some have said, that our occu- 
pations in the next world will be but a shadow of what 
delighted us in this,) I have imagined myself in some 
cold Theatre in Hades, where some of the forms of the 
earthly one should be kept up, with none of the enjoy- 
ment ; or like that 

Party in a parlor 
All silent, and all damned. 

Above all, those insufferable concertos, and pieces of 
music, as they are called, do plague and imbitter my 
apprehension. Words are something ; but to be ex- 
posed to an endless battery of mere sounds.; to be long 
a-dying ; to lie stretched upon a rack of roses ; to keep 
up languor by unintermitted effort ; to pile honey upon 
sugar, and sugar upon honey, to an interminable 
tedious sweetness ; to fill up sound with feeling, and 
strain ideas to keep pace with it ; to gaze on empty 
frames, and be forced to make the pictures for your- 
self; to read a book, all stojjs, and be obliged to supply 
the verbal matter ; to invent extempore tragedies to 
answer to the vague gestures of an inexplicable ram- 
bling mime, — these are faint shadows of what I have 
undergone from a series of the ablest executed pieces 
of this empty instrumental 7nusic. 

I deny not, that in the opening of a concert, I have 



A CHAPTER ON EARS. 73 

experienced something vastly lulling anc{ agreeable ; — 
afterwards followeth the languor and the oppression. 
— Like that disappointing book in Patmos ; or like 
the comings on of melancholy, described by Burton, 
doth music make her first insinuating approaches : 
" Most pleasant it is to such as are melancholy given 
to walk alone in some solitary grove, betwixt wood and 
water, by some brook side, and to meditate upon some 
delightsome and pleasant subject, which shall affect 
him most, arnabilis insania, and mentis gratissimus 
error. A most incomparable dehght to build castles in 
the air, to go smiling to themselves, acting an infinite 
variety of parts, which they suppose, and strongly 
imagine they act, or that they see done. So delight- 
some these toys at first, they could spend whole days 
and nights without sleep, even whole years in such 
contemplations, and fantastical meditations, which are 
like so many dreams, and will hardly be drawn from 
them, — winding and unwinding themselves as so many 
clocks, and still pleasing their humors, until at the 
last the SCENE turns upon a sudden, and they being 
now habituated to such meditations and solitary places, 
can endure no company, can think of nothing but 
harsh and distasteful subjects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, 
subrusticus pudor, discontent, cares, and weariness of 
life, surprise them on a sudden, and they can think of 
nothing else ; continually suspecting, no sooner are 
their eyes open, but this infernal plague of melancholy 
seizeth on them, and terrifies their souls, representing 
some dismal object to their minds ; which now, by no 
means, no labor, no persuasions, they can avoid, they 
cannot be rid of, they cannot resist." 

Something like this " scene turning " I have ex- 



74 A CHAPTER ON EARS. 

perienced at tlie evening parties, at the house of my 

good Catholic friend Nov ; who, by the aid of a 

capital organ, himself the most finished of players, 
converts his drawing-room into a chapel, his weekdays 
into Sundays, and these latter into minor heavens.* 

When my friend commences upon one of those 
solemn anthems, which peradventure struck upon my 
heedless -ear, rambling in the side aisles of the dim 
Abbej^, some five-and-thirty years since, waking a new 
sense, and puttmg a soul of old religion into my 
young apprehension — (whether it be tliat^ in which 
the Psalmist, weary of the persecutions of bad men, 
wisheth to himself dove's wings — or tJiat otJier^ which, 
with a like measure of sobriety and pathos, inquireth 
by what means the young man shall best cleanse his 
mind) — a holy calm pervadeth me. I am for the 
time 

rapt above earth, 
And possess joys not promised at my birth. 

But when this master of the spell, not content to 
have laid his soul prostrate, goes on, in his power, to 
inflict more bliss than lies in her capacity to receive, 
— impatient to overcome her "earthly" with his 
"heavenly," — still pouring in, for protracted hours, 
fresh waves and fresh from the sea of sound, or from 
that inexhausted Grerman ocean, above which, in tri- 
umphant progress, dolphin-seated, ride those Arions 
Haydn and Mozart^ with their attendant Tritons, Bach^ 
Beethoven^ and a countless tribe, whom to attempt to 
reckon up would but plunge me again in the deeps, — 
I stagger under the weight of harmony, reeling to and 

* I have been there, and still would go ; 

'Tis like a little heaven below. — Dr. Watts. 



ALL FOOLS' DAY. 75 

fro at my wits' end ; — clouds, as of frankincense, 
oppress me — priests, altars, censers, dazzle before me 

— tlie genius of Ms religion hath me in her toils — a 
shadowy triple tiara invests the brow of my friend, late 
so naked, so ingenuous — he is Pope, — and by him 
sits, like as in the anomaly of dreams, a she-Pope too, 

— tri-coroneted like himself ! — I am converted, and 
yet a Protestant ; — at once malleus hereticorum^ and 
myself grand heresiarch : or three heresies centre in my 
person : — I am Marcion, Ebion, and Cerinthus — Gog 
and Macro o- — what not ? — till the comins: m of 
the friendly supper-tray dissipates the figment, and a 
draught of true Lutheran beer (in which chiefly my 
friend shows himself no bigot) at once reconciles me to 
the rationalities of a purer faith ; and restores to me 
the genuine unterrifying aspects of my pleasant-coun- 
tenanced host and hostess. 



ALL FOOLS' DAY. 



The compliments of the season to my worthy mas- 
ters, and a merry first of April to us all ! 

Many happy returns of this day to you — and you — 
and you^ Sir — nay, never frown, man, nor put a long 
face upon the matter. Do not we know one another ? 
what need of ceremony among friends ? we have all a 
touch of that same — you understand me — a speck of 
the motley. Beshrew the man who on such a day as 
this, the general festival^ should affect to stand aloof. 



76 ALL FOOLS' DAY. 

I am none of those sneakers. I am free of the corpo- 
ration, and care not who knows it. He that meets me 
in the forest to-day, shall meet with no wiseacre, I can 
tell him. Stultus sum. Translate me that, and take 
the meaning of it to yourself for your pains. What ! 
man, we have four quarters of the globe on our side, at 
the least computation. 

Fill us a cup of that sparkling gooseberry, — we will 
drink no wise, melancholy, politic port on this day, — 
and let us troll the catch of Amiens — due ad me — 
due ad we, — how goes it ? 

Here shall he see 
Gross fools as he. 

Now would I give a trifle to know historically and 
authentically, who was the greatest fool that ever lived. 
I would certainly give him in a bumper. Marry, of the 
present breed, I think I could without much difficulty 
name you the party. 

Remove your cap a little farther, if you please ; it 
hides my bauble. And now each man bestride his 
hobby, and dust away his bells to what tune he pleases. 
I will give you, for my part, — 

The crazy old church clock, 
And the bewilder'd chimes. 

Good master Empedocles, you are welcome. It is 
long since you went a salamander-gathering down 
JEtna. Worse than samphire-picking by some odds. 
'Tis a mercy your worship did not singe your mus- 
tachios. 

Ha ! Cleombrotus ! and what salads in faith did 
you light upon at the bottom of the Mediterranean ? 



ALL FOOLS' DAY. 77 

You were founder, I take it, of the disinterested sect 
of the Calenturists. 

Gebir, my old freemason, and prince of plasterers 
at Babel, bring in your trowel, most Ancient Grand ! 
You have claim to a seat here at my right hand, as 
patron of the stammerers. You left your work, if I re- 
member Herodotus correctly, at eight hundred million 
toises, or thereabout, above the level of the sea. Bless 
us, what a long bell you must have pulled, to call your 
top workmen to their nunchion on the low grounds of 
Shinar. Or did you send up your garlic and onions 
by a rocket ? 1 am a rogue if I am not ashamed to 
show you our Monument on Fish-street Hill, after your 
altitudes. Yet we think it somewhat. 

What, the magnanimous Alexander in tears ? — cry, 
baby, put its finger in its eye, it shall have another 
globe, round as an orange, pretty moppet ! 

Mister Adams 'odso, I honor your coat — pray 

do us the favor to read to us that sermon, which you 
lent to Mistress Slipslop — the twenty and second in 
your portmanteau there — on Female Incontinence — 
the same — it will come in most irrelevantly and im- 
pertinently seasonable to the time of the day. 

Good Master Raymund Lully, you look wise. Pray 
correct that error. 

Duns, spare your definitions. I must fine you a 
bumper, or a paradox. We will have nothing said or 
done syllogistically this day. Remove those logical 
Porms, waiter, that no gentleman break the tender shins 
of his apprehension stumbling across them. 

Master Stephen, you are late. — Ha ! Cokes, is it 
you ? — Aguecheek, my dear knight, let me pay my 
devoir to you. — Master Shallow, your worship's poor 



78 ALL FOOLS' DAY. 

servant to command. — Master Silence, I will use 
few words with you. — Slender, it shall go hard if I 
edge not you in somewhere. You six will engross 
all the poor wit of the company to-day. I know it, 
I know it. 

Ha ! honest R, , my fine old Librarian of Lud- 

gate, time out of mind, art thou here again ? Bless 
thy doublet, it is not over-new, threadbare as thy 
stories ; — what dost thou flitting about the world at 
this rate ? Thy customers are extinct, defanct, bed- 
rid, have ceased to read long ago. Thou goest still 
among them, seeing if, peradventure, thou canst hawk 

a volume or two. Good Granville S , thy last 

patron, is flown. 

King Pandion, he is dead, 

All thy friends are lapt in lead. 

Nevertheless, noble R- -, come in, and take your 

seat here, between Armado and Quisada ; for in true 
courtesy, in gravity, in fantastic smiling to thyself, in 
courteous smiling upon others, in the goodly ornature 
of well-apparelled speech, and the commendation of 
wise sentences, thou art nothing inferior to those ac- 
complished Dons of Spain. The spirit of chivalry 
forsake me forever, when I forget thy singing the 
song of Macheath, which declares that he might be 
happy ivith either^ situated between those two ancient 
spinsters, — when I forget the inimitable formal love 
which thou didst make, turning now to the one, and 
now to the other, with that Malvolian smile — as if 
Cervantes, not Gay, had written it for his hero ; and 
as if thousands of periods must revolve, before the 
mirror of courtesy could have given his invidious 



ALL FOOLS' DAY. 79 

preference between a pair of so goodly-propertied and 
meritorious-equal damsels. ..... 

To descend from these altitudes, and not to protract 
our Fools' Banquet beyond its appropriate day, — for 
I fear the second of April is not many hours distant, — 
in sober verity I will confess a truth to thee, reader. I 
love a Fool — as naturally, as if I were of kith and kin 
to him. When a child, with childlike apprehensions, 
that dived not below the surface of the matter, I read 
those Parables — not guessing at the involved wisdom, 
— I had more yearnings towards that simple architect, 
that built his house upon the sand, than I entertained 
for his more cautious neighbor ; I grudged at the hard 
censure pronounced upon the quiet soul that kept his 
talent ; and — prizing their simplicity beyond the more 
provident, and, to my apprehension, somewhat imfemi- 
nine wariness of their competitors — I felt a kindliness, 
that almost amounted to a teyidre, for those five thought- 
less virgins. I have never made an acquaintance since, 
that lasted ; or a friendship, that answered ; with any 
that had not some tincture of the absurd in their char- 
acters. I venerate an honest obliquity of understand- 
ing;. The more laughable blunders a man shall commit 
in your company, the more tests he giveth you, that he 
will not betray or overreach you. I love the safety, 
which a palpable hallucination warrants ; the security, 
which a word out of season ratifies. And take my 
Word for this, reader, and say a fool told it you, if you 
please, that he who hath not a dram of folly in his mix- 
ture, hath pounds of much worse matter in his compo- 
sition. It is observed, that " the foolisher the fowl or 
fish, — woodcocks — dotterels — cods'-heads, — &c. the 
finer the flesh thereof;" and what are commonly the 



^0 A QUAKERS' MEETING. 

world's received fools, but such whereof the world is 
not worthy ? and what have been some of the kindliest 
patterns of our species, but so many darlings of absur- 
dity, minions of the goddess, and her white boys ? — 
Reader, if you wrest my words beyond their fair con- 
struction, it is you, and not I, that are the April Fool. 



A QUAKERS' MEETING. 

Stillborn Silence ! tliou that art 

Floodgate of the deeper heart ! 

Offspring of a heavenly kind ! 

Frost o' the mouth, and thaw o' the mind! 

Secrecy's confidant, and he 

Who makes religion mystery! 

Admiration's speaking'st tongue ! 

Leave thy desert shades among 

Eeverend hermits' hallow'd cells, 

Where retried devotion dwells ! 

With thy enthusiasms come, 

Seize our tongues, and strike us dumb ! * 

Reader, would'st thou know what true peace and 
([uiet mean ; would'st thou find a refuge from the 
noises and clamors of the multitude ; would'st thou 
enjoy at once solitude and society ; would'st thou pos- 
sess the depth of thine own spirit in stillness, without 
being shut out from the consolatory faces of thy species ; 
would'st thou be alone, and. yet accompanied ; solitary, 
yet not desolate ; singular, yet not without some to 
keep thee in countenance ; a unit in aggregate ; a 

* From " Poems of all Sorts," by Richard Fleckno, 1653. 



A QUAKERS' MEETING. 81 

simple in composite : — come with me into a Quakers' 
Meeting. 

Dost thou love silence deep as that " before the 
winds were made ? " go not out into the wilderness ; 
descend not into the profimdities of the earth ; shut 
not up thy casements ; nor pour wax into the little 
cells of thy ears, with little-faith' d self-mistrusting 
Ulysses. — Retire with me into a Quakers' Meeting. 

For a man to refrain even from good words, and to 
hold his peace, it is commendable ; but for a multitude, 
it is great mastery. 

What is the stillness of the desert, compared with 
this place ? what the uncommunicating muteness of 
fishes ? — here the goddess reigns and revels. — " Bo- 
reas, and Cesias, and Argestes loud," do not with their 
inter-confounding uproars more augment the brawl — 
nor the waves of the blown Baltic with their clubbed 
sounds — than their opposite (Silence her sacred self) 
is multiplied and rendered more intense by numbers, 
and by sympathy. She too hath her deeps, that call 
unto deeps. Negation itself hath a positive more and 
less ; and closed eyes would seem to obscure the great 
obscurity of midnight. 

There are wounds which an imperfect solitude 
cannot heal. By imperfect I mean that which a man 
enjoy eth by himself. The perfect is that which he 
can sometimes attain in crowds, but nowhere so abso- 
lutely as in a Quakers' Meeting. Those first hermits 
did certainly understand this principle, when they re- 
tired into Egyptian solitudes, not singly, but in shoals, 
to enjoy one another's want of conversation. The 
Carthusian is bound to his brethren by this agreeing 
spirit of incommunicativeness. In secular occasions, 

VOL. III. 6 



82 A QUAKEES' MEETING. 

what so pleasant as to be reading a book through a 
long winter evening, with a friend sitting by — say, a 
wife — he, or she, too, (if that be probable,) reading 
another, without interruption, or oral communication ? 
— can there be no sympathy without the gabble of 
words ? — away with this inhuman, shy, single, shade- 
and-cavern-haunting solitariness. Give me, Master 
Zimmermann, a sympathetic solitude. 

To pace alone in the cloisters, or side aisles of some 
cathedral, time-stricken ; 

Or under hanging mountains, 
Or by the fall of fountains ; 

is but a vulgar luxury, compared with that which those 
enjoy who come together for the purposes of more 
complete, abstracted solitude. This is the loneliness 
"to be felt," — The Abbey Church of Westminster 
hath nothing so solemn, so spirit-soothing, as the naked 
walls and benches of a Quakers' Meeting. Here are 
no tombs, no inscriptions, — 

Sands, ignoble things, 
Dropt from the mined sides of kings; — 

but here is something which throws Antiquity herself 
into the foreo-round — Silexce — eldest of thino-s — 
language of old Night — primitive Discourser — to 
which the insolent decays of mouldering grandeur 
have but arrived by a violent, and, as we may say, 
unnatural progression. 

How reverend is the view of these hushed heads, 
Looking tranquillity ! 

Nothing-plotting, nought-cabalhng, unmischievous 



A QUAKERS' MEETING. 83 

synod ! convocation without intrigue ! parliament with- 
out debate ! what a lesson dost thou read to council, 
and to consistory ! — if my pen treat of you lightly — 
as haply it will wander — yet my spirit hath gravely 
felt the wisdom of your custom, when sitting among 
you in deepest peace, which some out-welling tears 
would rather confirm than disturb, I have reverted to 
the times of your beginnings, and the sowings of the 
seed by Fox and Dewesbury. I have witnessed that 
which brought before my eyes your heroic tranquillity, 
inflexible to the rude jests and serious violences of the 
insolent soldiery, republican or royalist, sent to molest 
you, — for ye sate betwixt the fires of two persecutions, 
the outcast and ofFscouring of church and presbytery. 
I have seen the reeling sea-ruffian, who had wandered 
into your receptacle with the avowed intention of dis- 
turbing your quiet, from the very spirit of the place 
receive in a moment a new heart, and presently sit 
among ye as a lamb amidst lambs. And I remember 
Penn before his accusers, and Fox in the bail-dock, 
where he was lifted up in spirit, as he tells us, and 
" the Judge and the Jury became as dead men under 
his feet." 

Reader, if you are not acquainted with it, I would 
recommend to you, above all church-narratives, to read 
Sewel's " History of the Quakers." It is in folio, and 
is the abstract of the Journals of Fox and the primitive 
Friends. It is far more edifying and affecting than 
anything you will read of Wesley and his colleagues. 
Here is nothing to stagger you, nothing to make you 
mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the 
worldly or ambitious spirit. You will here read the 
true story of that much-injured, ridiculed man, (who 



84 A QUAKERS' MEETING. 

perhaps liath been a byword in your mouth,) — James 
Naylor : what dreadful sufFermgs, with what patience, 
he endured, even to the boring through of his tongue 
with redhot irons, without a murmur ; and with what 
strength of mind, when the delusion he had fallen into, 
which they stigmatized for blasphemy, had given way to 
clearer thoughts, he could renounce his error, in a strain 
of the beautifiillest humility, yet keep his first grounds, 
and be a Quaker still I — so different from the prac- 
tice of your common converts from enthusiasm, who, 
when they apostatize, apostatize all, and think they can 
never get far enough from the society of their former 
errors, even to the renunciation of some saving truths, 
with which they had been mingled, not implicated. 

Get the Writings of John Woolman by heart ; and 
love the early Quakers. 

How far the followers of these good men in our days 
have kept to the primitive spirit, or in what proportion 
they have substituted formality for it, the Judge of 
Spirits can alone determine. I have seen faces in their 
assemblies, upon which the dove sate visibly brooding. 
Others again I have watched, when my thoughts 
should have been better engaged, in which I could 
possibly detect nothing but a blank inanity. But quiet 
was in all, and the disposition to unanimity, and the 
absence of the fierce controversial workings. If the 
spiritual pretensions of the Quakers have abated, at 
least they make few pretences. Hypocrites they cer- 
tainly are not, in their preaching. It is seldom indeed 
that you shall see one get up amongst them to hold 
forth. Only now and then a trembling, female, gener- 
ally andeiit voice is heard — you cannot guess from 
what part of the meeting it proceeds — with a low, 



A QUAKEES' MEETING. 85 

buzzing, musical sound, laying out a few words which 
" she thought might suit the condition of some pres- 
ent," with a quaking diffidence, which leaves no pos- 
sibility of supposing that anything of female vanity was 
mixed up, where the tones were so full of tenderness, 
and a restraining modesty. The men, for what I have 
observed, speak seldomer. 

Once only, and it was some years ago, I witnessed a 
sample of the old Foxian orgasm. It was a man of 
giant stature, who, as Wordsworth phrases it, might 
have danced " from head to foot equipt in iron mail." 
His frame was of iron too. But Tie was malleable. 
I saw him shake all over with the spirit — I dare not 
say of delusion. The strivings of the outer man were 
unutterable — he seemed not to speak, but to be spoken 
from. I saw the strong man bowed down, and his 
knees to fail — his joints all seemed loosening — it was 
a figure to set off against Paul Preaching — the words 
he uttered were few, and sound — he was evidently 
resisting his will — keeping down his own word-wisdom 
with more mighty effort, than the world's orators strain 
for theirs. " He had been a w^it in his youth," he told 
us, with expressions of a sober remorse. And it was 
not till long after the impression had begun to wear 
away, that I was enabled, with something like a smile, 
to recall the striking incongruity of the confession — 
understanding the term in its worldly acceptation — ■ 
with the frame and physiognomy of the person before 
me. His brow would have scared away the Levites 
— the Jocos Risus-que — faster than the Loves fled the 
face of Dis at Enna. By wit^ even in his youth, I will 
be sworn, he understood something far within the limits 
3f an allowable liberty. 



86 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 

More frequently the Meeting is broken up without 
a word having been spoken. But the mind has been 
fed. You go away with a sermon not made with 
hands. You have been in the milder caverns of Tro- 
phonius ; or as in some den, where that fiercest and 
savagest of all wild creatures, the Tongue, that unruly 
member, has strangely lain tied up and captive. You 
have bathed with stillness. O when the spirit is sore 
fretted, even tired to sickness of the janglings, and non- 
sense-noises of the world, what a balm and a solace 
it is, to go and seat yourself, for a quiet half hour, 
upon some undisputed corner of a bench, among the 
gentle Quakers ! 

Their garb and stillness conjoined, present a uni- 
formity, tranquil and herd-like — as in the pasture — 
"forty feeding like one." 

The very garments of a Quaker seem incapable of 
receivmg a soil ; and cleanliness in them to be some- 
thing more than the absence of its contrary. Every 
Quakeress is a lily ; and when they come up in bands 
to their Whitsun-conferences, whitening the easterly 
streets of the metropolis, from all parts of the United 
Kingdom, they show like troops of the Shining Ones. 



THE OLD AND THE NEAV SCHOOLMASTER. 

My reading has been lamentably desultory and im- 
methodical. Odd, out of the way, old English plays 
and treatises, have supplied me with most of my 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 87 

notions, and ways of feeling. In everything that re- 
lates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind 
the rest of the world. I should have scarcely cut a 
figure among the franklins, or country gentlemen, in 
King John's days. I know less geography than a 
schoolboy of six weeks' standing. To me a map of 
old Ortelius is as authentic as Arrowsmith. I do not 
know whereabout Africa merges into Asia ; whether 
Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great divisions ; 
nor can form the remotest conjecture of the position 
of New South Wales, or Van Diemen's Land. Yet 
do I hold a correspondence with a very dear friend in 
the first-named of these two Terrae Incognitse. I have 
no astronomy. I do not know where to look for the 
Bear, or Charles's Wain ; the place of any star ; or 
the name of any of them at sight. I guess at Venus 
only by her brightness ; and if the sun on some por- 
tentous morn were to make his first appearance in the 
West, I verily believe, that, while all the world w^ere 
gasping in apprehension about me, I alone should 
stand unterrified, from sheer incuriosity and want of 
observation. Of history and chronology I possess some 
vague points, such as one cannot help picking up in 
the course of miscellaneous study ; but I never deliber- 
ately sat down to a chronicle, even of my own country. 
I have most dim apprehensions of the four great mon- 
archies ; and sometimes the Assyrian, sometimes the 
Persian, floats as first, in my fancy. I make the 
widest conjectures concerning Egypt and her shep- 
herd kings. My friend M., with great painstaking, 
got me to think I understood the first proposition in 
Euclid, but gave me over in despair at the second. I 
am entirely unacquainted with the modern languages ; 



88 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 

and, like a better man than myself, have " small Latin 
and less Greek." I am a stranger to the shapes and 
texture of the commonest trees, herbs, flowers, — not 
from the circumstance of my being town-born, — for 
I should have brought the same inobservant spirit into 
the world with me, had I first seen it "on Devon's 
leafy shores," — and am no less at a loss among purely 
town-objects, tools, engines, mechanic processes. Not 
that I affect ignorance — but my head has not many 
mansions, nor spacious ; and I have been obliged to fill 
it with such cabinet curiosities as it can hold without 
aching. I sometimes wonder how I have passed my 
probation with so little discredit in the world, as I have 
done, upon so meagre a stock. But the fact is, a man 
may do very well with a very little knowledge, and 
scarce be found out, in mixed company ; everybody is 
so much more ready to produce his own, than to call 
for a display of your acquisitions. But in a tete-d-tete 
there is no shuffling. The truth will out. There is 
nothing which I dread so much as the being left alone 
for a quarter of an hour with a sensible, well-informed 
man, that does not know me. I lately got into a 
dilemma of this sort. 

In one of my daily jaunts between Bishopsgate and 
Shacklewell, the coach stopped to take up a staid-look- 
ing gentleman, about the wrong side of thirty, who 
was giving his parting directions (while the steps were 
adjusting), in a tone of mild authority, to a tall youth, 
who seemed to be neither his clerk, his son, nor his 
servant, but something partaking of all three. The 
youth was dismissed, and we drove on. As we were 
the sole passengers, he naturally enough addressed his 
conversation to me ; and we discussed the merits of the 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTEK. 89 

fare, the civility and punctuality of the driver ; the 
circumstance of an opposition coach having been lately 
set up, with the probabilities of its success, — to all 
which I was enabled to return pretty satisfactory an- 
swers, having been drilled into this, kind of etiquette by 
some years' daily practice of riding to and fro in the 
stage aforesaid, — when he suddenly alarmed me by a 
startling question, whether I had seen the show of prize 
cattle that morning in Smithfield ? Now, as I had not 
seen it, and do not greatly care for such sort of exhibi- 
tions, I was obliged to return a cold negative. He 
seemed a little mortified, as well as astonished, at my 
declaration, as (it appeared) he was just come fresh 
from the sight, and doubtless had hoped to compare 
notes on the subject. However, he assured me that I 
had lost a fine treat, as it far exceeded the show of last 
year. We were now approaching Norton Folgate, 
when the sight of some shop-goods ticketed freshened 
him up into a dissertation upon the cheapness of cot- 
tons this spring. I was now a little in heart, as the 
nature of my morning avocations had brought me into 
some sort of familiarity with the raw material ; and I 
was surprised to find how eloquent I was becoming 
on the state of the India market, — when, presently, 
he dashed my incipient vanity to the earth at once, 
by inquiring whether I had ever made any calcula- 
tion as to the value of the rental of all the retail 
shops in London. Had he asked of me what song the 
Siren sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he 
hid himself among women, I might, with Sir Thomas 
Browne, have hazarded a "wide solution." * My com- 
panion saw my embarrassment, and, the almshouses be- 

* Urn Burial. 



90 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 

yond Shoreditcli just coming in view, with great good- 
nature and dexterity, shifted his conversation to the 
subject of puhhc charities ; which led to the compara- 
tive merits of provision for the poor in past and present 
times, with observations on the old monastic institu- 
tions, and charitable orders ; but, finding me rather 
dimly impressed with some glimmering notions from 
old poetic associations, than strongly fortified with any 
speculations reducible to calculation on the subject, he 
gave the matter up ; and, the country beginning to 
open more and more upon us, as we approached the 
turnpike at Kingsland (the destined termination of his 
journey), he put a home thrust upon me, in the most 
unfortunate position he could have chosen, by advanc- 
ing some queries relative to the North Pole. Expedition. 
While I was muttering out something about the Pano- 
rama of those strange regions (which I had actually 
seen), by way of parrying the question, the coach stop- 
ping relieved me from any further apprehensions. My 
companion getting out, left me in the comfortable pos- 
session of my ignorance ; and I heard him, as he went 
off, putting questions to an outside passenger, who had 
alighted with him, regarding an epidemic disorder that 
had been rife about Dalston, and which my friend as- 
sured him had gone through five or six schools in that 
neighborhood. The truth now flashed upon me, that 
my companion was a schoolmaster ; and that the youth, 
whom he had parted from at our first acquaintance, 
must have been one of the bigger boys, or the usher. 
He was evidently a kind-hearted man, who did not 
seem so much desirous of provoking discussion by the 
questions which he put, as of obtaining information at 
any rate. It did not appear that he took any interest, 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTEE. 91 

either, in such kind of inquiries, for their own sake ; 
but that he was in some way bound to seek for knowl- 
edge. A greenish-colored coat, which he had on, for- 
bade me to surmise that he was a clergyman. The 
adventure gave birth to some reflections on the differ- 
ence between persons of his profession in past and 
present times. 

Rest to the souls of those fine old Pedagogues ; the 
breed, long since extinct, of the Lilys, and the Lina- 
cres ; who, believing that all learning was contained in 
the languages which they taught, and despising every 
other acquirement as superficial and useless, came to 
their task as to a sport ! Passing from infancy to age, 
they dreamed away all their days as in a grammar- 
school. Revolving in a perpetual cycle of declensions, 
conjugations, syntaxes, and prosodies ; renewing con- 
stantly the occupations which had charmed their studi- 
ous childhood ; rehearsing continually the part of the 
past ; life must have slipped from them at last like one 
day. They were always in their first garden, reaping 
harvests of their golden time, among their Flori and 
their Spici-legia ; in Arcadia still, but kings ; the ferule 
of their sway not much harsher, but of like dignity 
with that mild sceptre attributed to king Basileus ; the 
Greek and Latin, their stately Pamela and their Philo- 
clea ; with the occasional duncery of some untoward 
tyro, serving for a refreshing interlude of a Mopsa or a 
clown Damoetas ! 

With what a savor doth the Preface to Colet's, or 
(as it is sometimes called) Paul's Accidence, set forth ! 
" To exhort every man to the learning of grammar, 
that intendeth to attain the understanding of the 
tongues, wherein is contained a great treasury of 



92 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 

wisdom and knowledge, it would seem but vain and 
lost labor; for so much as it is known, that nothing 
can surely be ended, whose beginning is either feeble 
or faulty ; and no building be perfect whereas the 
foundation and groundwork is ready to fall, and unable 
to uphold the burden of the frame." How well doth 
this stately preamble (comparable to those which Mil- 
ton commendeth as " having been the usage to prefix 
to some solemn law, then first promulgated by Solon, 
or Lycurgus,") correspond with and illustrate that 
pious zeal for conformity, expressed in a succeeding 
clause, which would fence about grammar-rules with 
the severity of faith-articles I — "as for the diversity 
of grammars, it is well profitably taken away by the 
Kings Majesties wisdom, who, foreseeing the inconven- 
ience, and favourably providing the remedie, caused one 
kind of grammar by sundry learned men to be dili- 
gently drawn, and so to be set out, only everywhere 
to be taught, for the use of learners, and for the hurt 
in changing of schoolmaisters." What a gusto in that 
which follows : " wherein it is profitable that he [the 
pupil] can orderly decline his noun, and his verb." 
His noun ! 

The fine dream is fading away fast ; and the least 
concern of a teacher in the present day is to inculcate 
grammar-rules. 

The modern schoolmaster is expected to know a little 
of everything, because his pupil is required not to be 
entirely ignorant of anything. He must be superficially, 
if I may so say, omniscient. He is to know something 
of pneumatics ; of chemistry ; of whatever is curious, 
or proper to excite the attention of the youthful mind ; 
an insiffht into mechanics is desirable, with a touch of 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTEE. 93 

statistics ; the quality of soils, &c., botany, the consti- 
tution of his country, cum multis aliis. You may get a 
notion of some part of his expected duties by consult- 
ing the famous Tractate on Education addressed to Mr. 
Hartlib. 

All these things — these, or the desire of them, — he 
is expected to instil, not by set lessons from professors, 
which he may charge in the bill, but at school-intervals, 
as he walks the streets, or saunters through green fields 
(those natural instructors), with his pupils. The least 
part of what is expected from him, is to be done in 
school-hours. He must insinuate knowledge at the 
mollia tempora fandi. He must seize every occasion — 
the season of the year — the time of the day — a pas- 
sing cloud — a rainbow — a wagon of hay — a reg- 
iment of soldiers going by — to inculcate something 
useful. He can receive no pleasure from a casual 
glimpse of Nature, but must catch at it as an object of 
instruction. He must interpret beauty into the pictu- 
resque. He cannot relish a beggar-man, or a gypsy, for 
thinking of the suitable improvement. Nothing comes 
to him, not spoiled by the sophisticating medium of 
moral uses. The Universe — that Great Book, as it 
has been called — is to him indeed, to all intents and 
purposes, a book, out of which he is doomed to read 
tedious homilies to distasting schoolboys. Vacations 
themselves are none to him, he is only rather worse 
oif than before ; for commonly he has some intrusive 
upper-boy fastened upon him at such times ; some 
cadet of a great family; some neglected lump of nobil- 
ity, or gentry ; that he must drag after him to the play, 
to the Panorama, to Mr. Bartley's Orrery, to the 
Panopticon, or into the country, to a friend's house, or 



94 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 

his favorite watering-place. Wherever he goes, this 
uneasy shadow attends him. A boy is at his board, 
and in his path, and in all his movements. He is boy- 
rid, sick of perpetual boy. 

Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among 
their mates ; but they are unwholesome companions 
for grown people. The restraint is felt no less on the 
one side, than on the other. Even a child, that 
" plaything for an hour," tires always. The noises of 
children, playing their own fancies — as I now hearken 
to them by fits, sporting on the green before my win- 
dow, while I am engaged -in these grave speculations at 
my neat suburban retreat at Shacklewell — by distance 
made more sweet — inexpressibly take from the labor 
of my task. It is like writing to music. They seem 
to modulate my periods. They ought at least to do so, 
— for in the voice of that tender age there is a kind of 
poetry, far unlike the harsh prose-accents of man's 
conversation. I should but spoil their sport, and 
diminish my own sympathy for them, by mingling in 
their pastime. 

I would not be domesticated all my days with a per- 
son of very superior capacity to my own, — not, if I 
know myself at all, from any considerations of jealousy 
or self-comparison, for the occasional communion with 
such minds has constituted the fortune and felicity of 
my life, — but the habit of too constant intercourse with 
spirits above you, instead of raising you, keeps you 
down. Too frequent doses of original thinking from 
others, restrain what lesser, portion of that faculty you 
may possess of your own. You get entangled in an- 
other man's mind, even as you lose yourself in another 
man's grounds. You are walking with a tall varlet, 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 95 

whose strides outpace yours to lassitude. The con- 
stant operation of such potent agency would reduce 
me, I am convinced, to imbecility. You may derive 
thoughts from others ; your way of thinking, the 
mould in which your thoughts are cast, must be your 
own. Intellect may be imparted, but not each man's 
intellectual frame. 

As little as I should wish to be always thus dragged 
upward, as little (or rather still less) is it desirable to 
be stunted downwards by your associates. The trum- 
pet does not more stun you by its loudness, than a 
whisper teases you by its provoking inaudibility. 

Why are we never quite at our ease in the presence 
of a schoolmaster ? — because we are conscious that he 
is not quite at his ease in ours. He is awkward, and 
out of place, in the society of his equals. He comes 
like Gulliver from among his little people, and he 
cannot fit the stature of his understanding to yours. 
He cannot meet you on the square. He wants a point 
given him, like an indifferent whist-player. He is so 
used to teaching, that he wants to be teaching you. 
One of these professors, upon my complaining that 
these little sketches of mine were anything but method- 
ical, and that I was unable to made them otherwise, 
kindly offered to instruct me in the method by which 
young gentlemen in A^s seminary were taught to com- 
pose English themes. The jests of a schoolmaster are 
coarse, or thin. They do not tell out of school. He is 
under the restraint of a formal or didactive hypocrisy 
in company, as a clergyman is under a moral one. He 
can no more let his intellect loose in society, than the 
other can his inclinations. He is forlorn among his 
coevals ; his juniors cannot be his friends. 



96 THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 

" I take blame to myself," said a sensible man of this 
profession, writing to a friend respecting a youth who 
had quitted his school abruptly, " that your nephew 
was not more attached to me. But persons in my situ- 
ation are more to be pitied, than can well be imagined. 
We are surrounded by young, and, consequently, 
ardently affectionate hearts, but we can never hope to 
share an atom of their afPections. The relation of 
master and scholar forbids this. How pleasing this 
must he to you^ how I envy your feelings ! my friends 
will sometimes say to me, when they see young men 
whom 1 have educated, return after some years' ab- 
sence from school, their eyes shining with pleasure, 
while they shake hands with their old master, bringing 
a present of game to me, or a toy to my wife, and 
thanking me in the warmest terms for my care of their 
education. A holiday is begged for the boys ; the house 
is a scene of happiness ; I, only, am sad at heart. This 
fine-spirited and warm-hearted youth, who fancies he 
repays his master with gratitude for the care of his 
boyish years — this young man — in the eight long 
years I watched over him with a parent's anxiety, 
never could repay me with one look of genuine feeling. 
He was proud, when I praised ; he was submissive, 
when I reproved him ; but he did never love me ; — 
and what he now mistakes for gratitude and kindness 
for me, is but the pleasant sensation, which all persons 
feel at revisiting the scenes of their boyish hopes and 
• fears ; and the seeing on equal terms the man they 
were accustomed to look up to with reverence. My 
wife too," this interesting correspondent goes on to say, 
'' my once darling Anna, is the wife of a schoolmaster. 
When I married her, — knowing that the wife of a 



THE OLD AND THE NEW SCHOOLMASTER. 97 

schoolmaster ought to be a busy notable creature, and 

fearing that my gentle Anna would ill supply the loss 

of my dear bustling mother, just then dead, who never 

sat still, was in every part of the house in a moment, 

and whom I was obliged sometimes to threaten to fasten 

down in a chair, to save her from fatiguing herself to,^ 

death, — I expressed my fears that I was bringing her 

into a way of life unsuitable to her ; and she, who loved 

me tenderly, promised for my sake to exert herself to 

perform the duties of her new situation. She promised, 

and she has kept her word. What wonders will not 

woman's love perform ? My house is managed with 

a propriety and decorum unknown in other schools ; 

my boys are well fed, look healthy, and have every 

proper accommodation ; and all this performed with a 

careftil economy, that never descends to meanness. 

But I have lost my gentle helpless Anna ! When we 

sit down to enjoy an hour of repose after the fatigue of 

the day, I am compelled to listen to what have been 

her usefal (and they are really useful) employments 

through the day, and what she proposes for her 

to-morrow's task. Her heart and her features are 

changed by the duties of her situation. To the boys, 

she never appears other than the master^s wife, and she 

looks up to me as the boi/^s master ; to whom all show 

of love and affection would be highly improper, and 

unbecoming the dignity of her situation and mine. 

Yet this my gratitude forbids me to hint to her. For 

my sake she submitted to be this altered creature, and 

can I reproach her for it? " — For the communication 

of this letter, I am indebted to my cousin Bridget, 
vol.. III. 7 



98 IMPEEFECT SYMPATHIES. 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 

I am of a constitution so general, that it consorts and sympathizeth with 
all things; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy in anything. 
Those natural repugnancies do not touch me, nor do I behold with prej- 
udice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch. — Religio Medici. 

That the author of the Religio Medici, mounted 
upon the airy stilts of abstraction, conversant about 
notional and conjectural essences ; in whose categories 
of Being the possible took the upper hand of the actual ; 
should have overlooked the impertinent individualities 
of such poor concretions as mankind, is not much to be 
admired. It is rather to be wondered at, that in the 
genus of animals he should have condescended to dis- 
tinguish that species at all. For myself — earthbound 
and fettered to the scene of my activities, — 

Standing on earth, not rapt above the sky, 

I confess that I do feel the differences of mankind, 
national or individual, to an unhealthy excess. I can 
look with no indifferent eye upon things or persons. 
Whatever is, is to me a matter of taste or distaste ; or 
when once it becomes indifferent, it begins to be dis- 
relishing. I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prej- 
udices — made up of likings and dislikings — the 
veriest thrall to sympathies, apathies, antipathies. In 
a certain sense, I hope it may be said of me that I 
am a lover of my species. I can feel for all indiffer- 
ently, but I cannot feel towards all equally. The 
more purely English word that expresses sympathy, 
will better explain my meaning. I can be a friend 



IMPERFECT SYiMPATHIES. 99 

to a worthy man, who upon another account cannot 
be my mate or fellow. I cannot like all people alike.* 
I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, 
and am obliged to desist from the experiment in de- 
spair. They cannot like me, — and in truth, I never 
knew one of that nation who attempted to do it. There 
is something more plain and ingenuous in their mode 
of proceeding. We know one another at first sight. 
There is an order of imperfect intellects (under which 
mine must be content to rank) which in its constitution 
is essentially anti-Caledonian. The owners of the sort 
of faculties I allude to, have minds rather suggestive 
than comprehensive. They have no pretences to much 
clearness or precision in their ideas, or in their manner 
of expressing them. Their intellectual wardrobe (to 

* I Avould be understood as confining myself to tlie subject of imperfect 
sympathies. To nations or classes of men tliere can be no direct antipathy. 
There may be individuals born and constellated so opposite to another 
individual nature, that the same sphere cannot hold them. I have met 
with my moral antipodes, and can believe the story of two persons meet- 
ing (who never saw one another before in their lives) and instantly fight- 
ing. 

We^by proof find there should be 
'Twixt man and man such an antipathy. 
That though he can show no just reason wJiy 
For any former wrong or injury, 
Can neither find a blemish in his fame, 
Nor aught in face or feature justly blame, 
Can challenge or accuse him of no evil, 
Yet notwithstanding, hates him as a devil. 

The lines are from old Heywood's " Hierarchic of Angels," and he sub- 
joins a curious storj'- in confirmation, of a Spaniard who attempted to 
assassinate a King Ferdinand of Spain, and being put to the rack could 
give no other reason for the deed but an inveterate antipathy which he 
had taken to the first sight of the King. 

The cause which to that act compell'd him 
Was, he ne'er loved him since he first beheld him. 



100 IMPEKFECT SYMPATHIES. 

confess fairly) has few whole pieces in it. They are 
content with fragments and scattered pieces of Truth. 
She presents no full front to them — a feature or side- 
face at the most. Hints and glimpses, germs and crude 
essays at a system, is the utmost they pretend to. They 
beat up a little game peradventure — and leave it to 
knottier heads, more robust constitutions, to run it 
down. The light that lights them is not steady and 
polar, but mutable and shifting ; waxing, and again 
waning. Their conversation is accordingly. They 
will throw out a random word in or out of season, 
and be content to let it pass for what it is worth. 
They cannot speak always as if they were upon their 
oath, — but must be understood, speaking or writing, 
with some abatement. They seldom wait to mature 
a proposition, but e'en bring it to market in the green 
ear. They delight to impart their defective discoveries 
as they arise, without waiting for their full develop- 
ment. They are no systematizers, and would but err 
more by attempting it. Their minds, as I said before, 
are suggestive merely. The brain of a true Caledonian 
(if I am not mistaken) is constituted upon quite a 
different plan. His Minerva is born in panoply. You 
are never admitted to see his ideas in their growth, — 
if, indeed, they do grow, and are not rather put to- 
gether upon principles of clock-work. You never catch 
his mind in an undress. He never hints or suggests 
anything, but unlades his stock of ideas in perfect order 
and completeness. He brings his total wealth into com- 
pany, and gravely unpacks it. His riches are always 
about him. He never stoops to catch a glittering 
something in your presence to share it with you, before 
he quite knows whether it be true touch or not. You 



IMPEEFECT SYMPATHIES. 101 

cannot cry halves to anything that he finds. He does 
not find, but bring. You never witness his first ap- 
prehension of a thing. His understanding is always 
at its meridian, — you never see the first dawn, the 
early streaks. He has no falterings of self-suspicion. 
Surmises, guesses, misgivings, half-intuitions, semi-con- 
sciousnesses, partial illuminations, dim instincts, embryo 
conceptions, have no place in his brain or vocabulary. 
The twilight of dubiety never falls upon him. Is he 
orthodox — he has no doubts. Is he an infidel — he 
has none either. Between the affirmative and the 
negative there is no border-land with him. You can- 
not hover with him upon the confines of truth, or 
wander in- the maze of a probable argument. He 
always keeps the path. You cannot make excursions 
with him — for he sets you right. His taste never 
fluctuates. His morality never abates. He cannot 
compromise, or understand middle actions. There 
can be but a right and a wrong. His conversation 
is as a book. His affirmations have the sanctity of 
an oath. Yoa must speak upon the square with him. 
He stops a metaphor like a suspected person in an 
enemy's country. " A healthy book ! " — said one of 
his countrymen to me, who had ventured to give that 
appellation to John Buncle, — " Did I catch rightly 
what you said? I have heard of a man in health, 
and of a healthy state of body, but I do not see how 
that epithet can be properly applied to a book." Above 
all, you must beware of indirect expressions before a 
Caledonian. Clap an extinguisher upon your irony, if 
you are unhappily blest with a vein of it. Remember 
you are upon your oath. I have a print of a graceftil 
female after Leonardo da Vinci, which I was showing 



102 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 

off to Mr. . After he had exammed it mi- 
nutely, I ventured to ask him how he Kked my beauty 
(a foohsh name it goes hj among mj friends), — when 
he very gravely assured me, that " he had considerable 
respect for my character and talents," (so he was 
pleased to say,) " but had not given himself much 
thought about the degree of my personal pretensions." 
The misconception staggered me, but did not seem 
much to disconcert him. Persons of this nation are 
particularly fond of affirming a truth — which nobody 
doubts. They do not so properly affirm, as annunciate 
it. They do indeed appear to have such a love of 
truth (as if, like virtue, it were valuable for itself,) 
that all truth becomes equally valuable, whether the 
proposition that contains it be new or old, disputed, or 
such as is impossible to become a subject of disputa- 
tion. I was present not long since at a party of North 
Britons, where a son of Burns was expected, and hap- 
pened to drop a silly expression (in my South British 
way), that I wished it were the father instead of the 
son, — when four of them started up at once to inform 
me, that " that was impossible, because he was dead." 
An impracticable wish, it seems, was more than they 
could conceive. Swift has hit off this part of their char- 
acter, namely, their love of truth, in his biting way, but 
with an illiberality that necessarily confines the passage 
to the margin.* The tediousness of these people is 

* There are some people who think they sufficiently acquit themselves, 
and entertain their company, with relating facts of no consequence, not at 
all out of the road of such common incidents as happen every day ; and 
this I have observed more frequently among the Scots than any other 
nation, who are very careful not to omit the minutest circumstances of 
time or place; which kind of discourse, if it were not a little relieved by 
the uncouth terms and phrases, as well as accent and gesture peculiar to 
that country, would be hardly tolerable. — Hints towards an Essay on Con- 
versation. 



IMPEEFECT SYMPATHIES. 103 

certainly provoking. I wonder if they ever tire one 
another ? - — In my early life I had a passionate fond- 
ness for the poetry of Burns. I have sometimes fool- 
ishly hoped to ingratiate myself with his countrymen 
by expressing it. But I have always found that a true 
Scot resents your admiration of his compatriot, even 
more than he would your contempt of him. The lat- 
ter he imputes to your " imperfect acquaintance with 
many of the words which he uses ; " and the same ob- 
jection makes it a presumption in you to suppose that 
you can admire him. Thomson they seem to have for- 
gotten. Smollett they have neither forgotten nor for- 
given, for his delineation of Rory and his companion, 
upon their first introduction to our metropolis. Speak 
of Smollett as a great genius, and they will retort upon 
you Hume's History compared with his Continuation 
of it. What if the historian had continued Humphrey 
Clinker ? 

I have, in the abstract, no disrespect for Jews. 
They are a piece of stubborn antiquity, compared with 
which Stonehenge is in its nonage. They date beyond 
the pyramids. But I should not care to be in habits 
of familiar intercourse with any of that nation. I 
confess that I have not the nerves to enter their 
synagogues. Old prejudices cling about me. I can- 
not shake oflp the story of Hugh of Lincoln. Cen- 
turies of injury, contempt, and hate, on the one side, 
— of cloaked revenge, dissimulation, and hate, on the 
other, — between our and their fathers, must and ought 
to aflPect the blood of the children. I cannot believe it 
can run clear and kindly yet ; or that a few fine words, 
such as candor, liberality, the light of a nineteenth 
century, can close up the breaches of so deadly a dis- 



104 IMPEEFECT SYMPATHIES. 

union. A Hebrew is nowhere congenial to me. He 
is least distasteful on 'Change — for the m-ercantile 
spirit levels all distinctions, as all are beauties in the 
dark. I boldly confess that I do not relish the approxi- 
mation of Jew and Christian, which has become so 
fashionable. The reciprocal endearments have, to me, 
something hypocritical and unnatural in them. I do 
not like to see the Church and Synagogue kissing and 
congeeing in awkward postures of an affected civility. 
If they are converted, why do they not come over to 
us altogether? Why keep up a form of separation, 
when the life of it is fled ? If they can sit with us at 
table, why do they keck at our cookery ? I do not 
understand these half convertites. Jews christianizing 
— Christians judaizing — puzzle me. I like fish or 
flesh. A moderate Jew is a more confounding piece 
of anomaly than a wet Quaker. The spirit of the 

synagogue is essentially separative. B would have 

been more in keeping if he had abided by the faith of 
his forefathers. There is a fine scorn in his face, 

which nature meant to be of Christians. The 

Hebrew spirit is strong in him, in spite of his prose- 
lytism. He cannot conquer the Shibboleth. How it 
breaks out when he sings, " The Children of Israel 
passed through the Red Sea ! " The auditors, for the 
moment, are as Egyptians to him, and he rides over 
our necks in triumph. There is no mistaking him. 
B has a strong expression of sense in his counte- 
nance, and it is confirmed by his singing. The founda- 
tion of his vocal excellence . is sense. He sings with 
understanding, as Kemble delivered dialogue. He 
would sing the Commandments, and give an appro- 
priate character to each prohibition. His nation, in 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 105 

general, have not over-sensible countenances. How 
should they ? — but you seldom see a silly expression 
among them. Gain, and the pursuit of gain, sharpen 
a man's visage. I never heard of an idiot being born 
among them. Some admire the Jewish female physi- 
ognomy'. I admire it — but with trembling. Jael had 
those fall dark inscrutable eyes. 

In the Negro countenance you will often meet with 
strong traits of benignity. I have felt yearnings of 
tenderness towards some of these faces — or rather 
masks — that have looked out kindly upon one in 
casual encounters in the streets and highways. I love 
what Fuller beautifully calls — these " images of God 
cut in ebony." But I should not like to associate with 
them, to share my meals and my good nights wdth 
them — because they are black. 

I love Quaker ways, and Quaker worship. I vener- 
ate the Quaker principles. It does me good for the 
rest of the day when I meet any of their people in my 
path. When I am ruffled or disturbed by any occur- 
rence, the sight or quiet voice of a Quaker acts upon 
me as a ventilator, lightening the air, and taking off a 
load from the bosom. But I cannot like the Quakers 
(as Desdemona w^ould say) " to live with them." I 
am all over sophisticated — with humors, fancies, crav- 
ing hourly sympathy. I must have books, pictures, 
theatres, chitchat, scandal, jokes, ambiguities, and a 
thousand whimwhams, which their simpler taste can do 
without. I should starve at their primitive banquet. 
My appetites are too high for the salads which (accord- 
ing to Evelyn) Eve dressed for the angel, my gusto too 
excited 

To sit a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 



106 IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 

The indirect answers whicli Quakers are often found 
to return to a question put to them may be explained, 
I think, without the vulgar assumption that they are 
more given to evasion and equivocating than other 
people. They naturally look to their words more 
carefully, and are more cautious of committing them- 
selves. They have a peculiar character to keep up 
on this head. They stand in a manner upon their 
veracity. A Quaker is by law exempted from taking 
an oath. The custom of resorting to an oath in ex- 
treme cases, sanctified as it is by all religious antiquity, 
is apt (it must be confessed) to introduce into the laxer 
sort of minds the notion of two kinds of truth, — the 
one applicable to the solemn affairs of justice, and the 
other to the common proceedings of daily intercourse. 
As truth bound upon the conscience by an oath can be 
but truth, so in the common affirmations of the shop 
and the market-place a latitude is expected, and con- 
ceded upon questions wanting this solemn covenant. 
Something less than truth satisfies. It is common to 
hear a person say, " You do not expect me to speak as 
if I were upon my oath." Hence a great deal of in- 
correctness and inadvertency, short of falsehood, creeps 
into ordinary conversation ; and a kind of secondary or 
laic-truth is tolerated, where clergy-truth — oath-truth, 
by the nature of the circumstances, is not required. A 
Quaker knows none of this distinction. His simple 
affirmation being received, upon the most sacred occa- 
sions, without any further test, stamps a value upon the 
words which he is to use upon the most indifferent 
topics of life. He looks to them, naturally, with more 
severity. You can have of him no more than his word. 
He knows, if he is caught tripping in a casual expres- 



IMPERFECT SYMPATHIES. 107 

sion, he forfeits, for himself at least, his claim to the 
invidious exemption. He knows that h^ syllables are 
weighed; and how far a consciousness of this par- 
ticular watchfulness, exerted against a person, has a 
tendency to produce indirect answers, and a diverting 
of the question by honest means, might be illustrated, 
and the practice justified, by a more sacred example 
than is proper to be adduced upon this occasion. The 
admirable presence of mind, which is notorious in 
Quakers upon all contingencies, might be traced to 
this imposed self-watchfalness, if it did not seem 
rather an humble and secular scion of that old stock of 
religious constancy, which never bent or faltered, in 
the Primitive Friends, or gave way to the winds of 
persecution, to the violence of judge or accuser, under 
trials and racking examinations. " You will never 
be the wiser, if I sit here answering your questions 
till midnight," said one of those upright Justicers to 
Penn, who had been putting law-cases with a puzzling 
subtlety. " Thereafter as the answers may be," re- 
torted the Quaker. The astonishing composure of 
this people is sometimes ludicrously displayed in lighter 
instances. I was travelling in a stage-coach with three 
male Quakers, buttoned up in the straitest non-con- 
formity of their sect. We stopped to bait at Andover, 
where a meal, partly tea apparatus, partly supper, was 
set before us. My friends confined themselves to the 
tea-table. I, in my way, took supper. When the 
landlady brought in the bill, the eldest of my compan- 
ions discovered that she had charged for both meals. 
This was resisted. Mine hostess was very clamorous 
and positive. Some mild arguments were used on the 
part of the Quakers, for which the heated mind of the 



108 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEAES. 

good lady seemed by no means a fit recipient. The 
guard came in with his usual peremptory notice. The 
Quakers pulled out their money and formally tendered 
it — so much for tea, — I, m humble imitation, tender- 
ing mine — for the supper which I had taken. She 
would not relax in her demand. So they all three 
quietly put up then* silver, as did myself, and marched 
out of the room, the eldest and gravest going first, with 
myself closing up the rear, who thought I could not do 
better than follow the example of such grave and war- 
rantable personages. We got m. The steps went up. 
The coach drove oflp. The murmurs of mme hostess, 
not very indistinctly or ambiguously pronounced, be- 
came after a time inaudible, — and now my conscience, 
which the whimsical scene had for a while suspended, 
beginning to give some twitches, I waited, in the hope 
that some justification would be offered by these serious 
persons for the seeming mjustice of their conduct. To 
my great surprise, not a syllable was dropped on the 
subject. They sat as mute as at a meeting. At length 
the eldest of them broke silence, by inquiring of his 
next neighbor, " Hast thee heard how indigoes go at 
the India House? " — and the question operated as a 
soporific on my moral feehng as far as Exeter. 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 

We are too hasty when we set down our ancestors 
in the gross for fools, for the monstrous inconsistencies 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 109 

(as they seem to us) involved in their creed of witch- 
craft. In the relations of this visible world we find 
them to have been as rational and shrewd to detect an 
historic anomaly as ourselves. But when once the 
invisible world was supposed to be opened, and the 
lawless agency of bad spirits assumed, what measures 
of probability, of decency, of fitness, or proportion — 
of that which distinguishes the likely from the palpable 
absurd — could they have to guide them in the rejec- 
tion or admission of any particular testimony ? That 
maidens pined away, wasting inwardly as their waxen 
images consumed before a fire — that corn was lodged, 
and cattle lamed — that whirlwinds uptore in diabolic 
revelry the oaks of the forest — or that spits and kettles 
only danced a fearful innocent vagary about some 
rustic's kitchen when no wind was stirring, — were 
all equally probable where no law of agency was 
understood. That the prince of the powers of dark- 
ness, passing by the flower and pomp of the earth, 
should lay preposterous siege to the weak fantasy of 
indigent eld — has neither likelihood nor unlikelihood 
a priori to us, who have no measure to guess at his 
policy, or standard to estimate what rate those anile 
souls may fetch in the devil's market. Nor, when the 
wicked are expressly symbolized by a goat, was it to be 
wondered at so much, that he should come sometimes 
in that body and assert his metaphor. That the inter- 
course was opened at all between both worlds, was 
perhaps the mistake, — but that once assumed, I see no 
reason for disbelieving one attested story of this nature 
more than another on the score of absurdity. There 
is no law to judge of the lawless, or canon by which a 
dream may be criticized. 



110 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 

I have sometimes thought that I could not have ex- 
isted m the days of received witchcraft ; that I could 
not have slept in a village where one of those reputed 
hags dwelt. Our ancestors were bolder or more obtuse. 
Amidst the universal belief that these wretches were 
in league with the author of all evil, holding hell tribu- 
tary to their muttering, no simple Justice of the Peace 
seems to have scrupled issuing, or silly Headborough 
serving, a warrant upon them, — as if they should sub- 
poena Satan ! Prospero in his boat, with his books 
and wand about him, suffers himself to be conveyed 
away at the mercy of his enemies to an unknown isl- 
and. He might have raised a storm or two, we think, 
on the passage. His acquiescence is in exact analogy 
to the non-resistance of witches to the constituted 
powers. What stops the Fiend in Spenser from tear- 
ing Guyon to pieces, — or who had made it a condition 
of his prey, that Guyon must take assay of the glorious 
bait, — we have no guess. We do not know the laws 
of that country. 

From my childhood I was extremely inquisitive 
about witches and witch-stories. My maid, and more 
legendary aunt, supplied me with good store. But I 
shall mention the accident which directed my curiosity 
originally into this channel. In my father's book- 
closet, the " History of the Bible " by Stackhouse occu- 
pied a distinguished station. The pictures with which 
it abounds — one of the ark, in particular, and another 
of Solomon's temple, delineated with all the fidelity of 
ocular admeasurement, as if the artist had been upon 
the spot — attracted my childish attention. There was 
a picture, too, of the Witch raising up Samuel, which 
I wish that I had never seen. We shall come to that 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. Ill 

hereafter, Stackhouse is in two huge tomes, — and 
there was a pleasure in removing folios of that magni- 
tude, which, with infinite straining, was as much as I 
could manage, from the situation which they occupied 
upon an upper shelf. I have not met with the work 
from that time to this, but I remember it consisted of 
Old Testament stories, orderly set down, with the ob- 
jection appended to each story, and the solution of the 
objection regularly tacked to that. The objection was a 
summary of whatever difficulties had been opposed to 
the credibility of the history, by the shrewdness of an- 
cient or modern infidelity, drawn up with an almost 
complimentary excess of candor. The solution was 
brief, modest, and satisfactory. The bane and antidote 
were both before you. To doubts so put, and so 
quashed, there seemed to be an end forever. The 
dragon lav dead, for the foot of the veriest babe to 
trample on. But — like as was rather feared than 
realized from that slain monster in Spenser — from the 
womb of those crushed errors young dragonets would 
creep, exceeding the prowess of so tender a Saint 
George as myself to vanquish. The habit of expect- 
ing objections to every passage, set me upon starting 
more objections, for the glory of finding a solution of 
my own for them. I became staggered and perplexed, 
a skeptic in long-coats. The pretty Bible stories which 
I had read, or heard read in church, lost their purity 
and sincerity of impression, and were turned into so 
many historic or chronologic theses to be defended 
against whatever impugners. I was not to disbelieve 
them, but — the next thing to that — I was to be quite 
sure that some one or other would or had disbelieved 
them. Next to making a child an infidel, is the letting 



112 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEAES. 

him know that there are infidels at all. Credulity is 
the man's weakness, but the child's strength. O, how 
ugly sound scriptural doubts from the mouth of a babe 
and a suckling ! — I should have lost myself in these 
mazes, and have pined away, I think, with such unfit 
sustenance as these husks afforded, but for a fortunate 
piece of ill-fortune, which about this time befell me. 
Turning over the picture of the ark with too much 
haste, I unhappily made a breach in its ingenious fabric, 

— driving my inconsiderate fingers right through the 
two larger quadrupeds, — the elephant, and the camel, 

— that stare (as well they might) out of the last two 
windows next the steerage in that unique piece of naval 
architecture. Stackhouse was henceforth locked up, 
and became an interdicted treasure. With the book, 
the objections and solutions gradually cleared out of my 
head, and have seldom returned since in any force to 
trouble me. But there was one impression which I 
had imbibed from Stackhouse, which no dock or bar 
could shut out, and which was destined to try my 
childish nerves rather more seriously. That detest- 
able picture ! 

I was dreadftilly alive to nervous terrors. The 
night-time, solitude, and the dark, were my hell. The 
sufferings I endured in this nature would justify the ex- 
pression. I never laid my head on my pillow, I sup- 
pose^ from the fourth to the seventh or eighth year of 
my life — so far as memory serves in things so long 
ago — without an assurance, which realized its own 
prophecy, of seeing some frightful spectre. Be old 
Stackhouse then acquitted in part, if I say, that to his 
picture of the Witch raising up Samuel — (O that old 
man covered with a mantle ! ) — I owe — not my mid- 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 113 

night terrors, the hell of my infancj — but the shape 
and manner of their visitation. It was he who dressed 
up for me a hag that nightly sate upon my pillow, — a 
sure bedfellow, when my aunt or my maid was far from 
me. All day long, while the book was permitted me, 
I dreamed waking over his delineation, and at night 
(if I may use so bold an expression) awoke into sleep, 
and found the vision true. I durst not, even in the 
daylight, once enter the chamber where I slept, with- 
out my face turned to the window, aversely from the 
bed where my witchridden pillow was. Parents do 
not know what they do when they leave tender babes 
alone to go to sleep in the dark. The feeling about for 
a friendly arm — the hoping for a familiar voice — 
when they wake screaming — and find none to soothe 
them, — what a terrible shaldng it is to their poor 
nerves ! The keeping them up till midnight, through 
candlelight and the unwholesome hours, as they are 
called, — would, I am satisfied, in a medical point of 
view, prove the better caution. That detestable pic- 
ture, as I have said, gave the fashion to my dreams, — 
if dreams they were, — for the scene of them was inva- 
riably the room in which I lay. Had I never met with 
the picture, the fears would have come self-pictured in 
some shape or other, — 

Headless bear, black man, or ape, — 

but, as it was, my imaginations took that form. It is 
not book, or picture, or the stories of foolish servants 
which create these terrors in children. They can at 
most but give them a direction. Dear little T. H., 
who of all children has been brought up with the most 
scrupulous exclusion of every taint of superstition — 

VOL. III. 8 



114 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 

who was never allowed to liear of goblin or apparition, 
or scarcely to be told of bad men, or to read or hear of 
any distressing story, — finds all this world of fear, from 
which he has been so rigidly excluded ah extra^ in his 
own " thick-coming fancies ; " and from his little mid- 
night pillow, this nurse-child of optimism will start at 
shapes, unborrowed of tradition, in sw^eats to which 
the reveries of the cell-damned murderer are tran- 
quillity. 

Gorgons, and Hydras, and Chimeras dire— stories 
of Celaeno and the Harpies — may reproduce them- 
selves in the brain of superstition, — but they were 
there before. They are transcripts, types, — the arche- 
types are in us, and eternal. How else should the 
recital of that, which we know in a waking sense to be 
false, come to affect us at all ? — or 

Names, whose sense we see not, 
Fray us with things that be not? 

Is it that we naturally conceive terror from such ob- 
jects, considered in their capacity of being able to in- 
flict upon us bodily injury ? O, least of all ! These 
terrors are of older standing. They date beyond body, 
— or, without the body, they would have been the 
same. All the cruel, tormenting, defined devils in 
Dante, — tearing, mangling, choking, stifling, scorch- 
ing demons, — are they one half so fearful to the spirit 
of a man as the simple idea of a spirit unembodied 
following him — 

Like one that on a lonesome road 
Doth walk in fear and dread, 
And having once turn'd round, walks on 
And turns no more liis head ; 



WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 115 

Because he knows a frightful fiend 
Doth close behind him tread.* 

That the kind of fear here treated of is purely spirit- 
ual, — that it is strong in proportion as it is objectless 
upon earth, — that it predominates in the period of sin- 
less infancy, — are difficulties, the solution of which 
might afford some probable insight into our antemun- 
dane condition, and a peep at least into the shadowland 
of preexistence. 

My night fancies have long ceased to be afflictive. 
I confess an occasional nightmare ; but I do not, as in 
early youth, keep a stud of them. Fiendish faces, with 
the extinguished taper, will come and look at me ; but 
I know them for mockeries, even while I cannot elude 
their presence, and I fight and grapple with them. 
For the credit of my imagination, I am almost ashamed 
to say how tame and prosaic my dreams are grown. 
They are never romantic, seldom even rural. They 
are of architecture and of buildings, — cities abroad, 
which I have never seen and hardly have hoped to 
see. I have traversed, for the seeming length of a 
natural day, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Lisbon — their 
churches, palaces, squares, market-places, shops, sub- 
urbs, ruins, with an inexpressible sense of delight — a 
map-like distinctness of trace — and a daylight vivid- 
ness of vision, that was all but being awake. I have 
formerly travelled among the Westmoreland fells, — 
my highest Alps, — but they are objects too mighty for 
the grasp of my dreaming recognition ; and I have 
again and again awoke with ineffectual struggles of the 
inner eye, to make out a shape in any way whatever, 
of Helvellyn. Methought I was in that country, but 

* Mr. Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. 



116 WITCHES, AND OTHER NIGHT FEARS. 

the mountains were gone. The poverty of my dreams 
mortifies me. There is Coleridge, at his will can 
conjure up icy domes, and pleasure-houses for Kubla 
Khan, and Abyssinian maids, and songs of Abara, and 
caverns, 

Where Alph, the sacred river, runs, 

to solace his night solitudes, — when I cannot muster a 
fiddle. Barry Cornwall has his tritons and his nereids 
gamboling before him in nocturnal visions, and pro- 
claiming sons born to Neptune, — when my stretch of 
imaginative activity can hardly, in the night season, 
raise up the ghost of a fishwife. To set my failures in 
somewhat a mortifying light, — it was after reading the 
noble Dream of this poet, that my fancy ran strong 
upon these marine spectra ; and the poor plastic power, 
such as it is, within me set to work, to humor my folly 
in a sort of dream that very night. Methought I was 
upon the ocean billows at some sea nuptials, riding and 
mounted high, with the customary train sounding their 
conchs before me, (I myself, you may be sure, the 
leading god^ and joUily we went careering over the 
main, till just where Ino Leucothea should have greeted 
me (I think it was Ino) with a white embrace, the bil- 
lows gradually subsiding, fell from a sea-roughness to a 
sea-calm, and thence to a river motion, and that river 
(as happens in the familiarization of dreams) was no 
other than the gentle Thames, which landed me in the 
wafture of a placid wave or two, alone, safe, and inglo- 
rious, somewhere at the foot of Lambeth palace. 

The degree of the soul's creativeness in sleep might 
furnish no whimsical criterion of the quantum of poet- 
ical faculty resident in the same soul waking. An old 
gentleman, a friend of mine, and a humorist, used to 



VALENTINE'S DAY. 117 

carry this notion so far, that when he saw any stripling 
of his acquaintance ambitious of becoming a poet, his 
first question would be, — " Young man, what sort of 
dreams have you ? " I have so much faith in my old 
friend's theory, that when I feel that idle vein return- 
ing upon me, I presently subside into my proper ele- 
ment of prose, remembering those eluding nereids, and 
that inauspicious inland landing. 



VALENTINE'S DAY. 



Hail to thy returning festival, old Bishop Valentine ! 
Great is thy name in the rubric, thou venerable Arch- 
flamen of Hymen ! Immortal Go-between ; who and 
what manner of person art thou ? Art thou but a name^ 
typifying the restless principle which impels poor hu- 
mans to seek perfection in union ? or wert thou indeed 
a mortal prelate, with thy tippet and thy rochet, thy 
apron on, and decent lawn sleeves ? Mysterious per- 
sonage ! like unto thee, assuredly, there is no other 
mitred father in the calendar; not Jerome, nor Am- 
brose, nor Cyril ; nor the consigner of undipt infants 
to eternal torments, Austin, whom all mothers hate ; 
nor he who hated all mothers, Origen ; nor Bishop 
Bull, nor Archbishop Parker, nor Whitgift. Thou 
comest attended with thousands and ten thousands of 
little Loves, and the air is 

Brush' d with the hiss of rustling wings. 

Singing Cupids are thy choristers and thy precentors ; 



118 VALENTINE'S DAY. 

and instead of the crosier, the mystical arrow is borne 
before thee. 

In other words, this is the day on which those charm- 
ing httle missives, ycleped Valentines, cross and inter- 
cross each other at every street and turning. The 
weary and all forespent twopenny postman sinks be- 
neath a load of delicate embarrassments, not his own. 
It is scarcely credible to what an extent this ephemeral 
courtship is carried on in this loving town, to the great 
enrichment of porters, and detriment of knockers and 
bell-wires. In these little visual interpretations, no 
emblem is so common as the hearty — that little three- 
cornered exponent of all our hopes and fears, — the 
bestuck and bleeding heart ; it is twisted and tortured 
into more allegories and affectations than an opera-hat. 
What authority we have in history or mythology for 
placing the head-quarters and metropolis of God Cupid 
in this anatomical seat rather than in any other, is not 
very clear ; but we have got it, and it will serve as 
well as any other. Else we might easily imagine, upon 
some other system which might have prevailed for any- 
thing which our pathology knows to the contrary, a 
lover addressing his mistress, in perfect simplicity of 
feeling, " Madam, my liver and fortune are entirely 
at your disposal ; " or putting a delicate question, 
"Amanda, have you a midriff to bestow ? " But cus- 
tom has settled these things, and awarded the seat of 
sentiment to the aforesaid triangle, while its less fortu- 
nate neighbors wait at animal and anatomical distance. 

Not many sounds in hfe, and I include all urban and 
all rural sounds, exceed in interest a knock at the door. 
It " gives a very echo to the throne where Hope is 
seated." But its issues seldom answer to this oracle 



VALENTINE'S DAY. 119 

within. It is so seldom that just the person we want 
to see comes. But of all the clamorous visitations 
the welcomest in expectation is the sound that ushers 
in, or seems to usher in, a Valentine. As the raven 
himself was hoarse that announced the fatal entrance 
of Duncan, so the knock of the postman on this 
day is light, airy, confident, and befitting one that 
bringeth good tidings. It is less mechanical than on 
other days ; you will say, " That is not the post, I am 
sure." Visions of Love, of Cupids, of Hymens ! — 
delightful eternal commonplaces, which " having been, 
will always be ; " which no schoolboy nor schoolman 
can write away ; having your irreversible throne in the 
fancy and affections, — what are your transports, when 
the happy maiden, opening with careful finger, careful 
not to break the emblematic seal, bursts upon the sight 
of some well-designed allegory, some type, some youth- 
ful fancy, not without verses — - 

Lovers all, 
A madrigal, 

or some such device, not over abundant in sense, — 
young Love disclaims it,- — and not quite silly, — some- 
thing between wind and water, a chorus where the 
sheep might almost join the shepherd, as they did, or 
as I apprehend they did, in Arcadia. 

All Valentines are not foolish ; and I shall not easily 
forget thine, my kind friend (if I may have leave to 
call you so) E. B. — E. B. lived opposite a young 
maiden whom he had often seen, unseen, from his par- 
lor window in C — e Street. She was all joyousness 
and innocence, and just of an age to enjoy receiving 
a Vdlentine, and just of a temper to bear the disap- 
pointment of missing one with good-humor. E. B. is 



120 VALENTINE'S DAY. 

an artist of no common powers ; in the fancy parts of 
designing, perhaps inferior to none ; his name is known 
at the bottom of many a well-executed vignette in the 
way of his profession, but no further ; for E. B. is 
modest, and the world meets nobody half-way. E. B. 
meditated how he could repay this young maiden for 
many a favor which she had done him unknown ; for 
when a kindly face greets us, though but passing by, 
and never knows us again, nor we it, we should feel it 
as an obligation; and E. B. did. This good artist set 
himself at work to please the damsel. It was just 
before Valentine's day three years since. He wrought, 
unseen and unsuspected, a wondrous work. We need 
not say it was on the finest gilt paper with borders, — 
fall, not of common hearts and heartless allegory, but 
all the prettiest stories of love from Ovid, and older 
poets than Ovid (for E. B. is a scholar). There was 
Pyramids and Thisbe, and be sure Dido was not forgot, 
nor Hero and Leander, and swans more than sang in 
Cayster, with mottoes and fanciful devices, such as be- 
seemed, — a work, in short, of magic. Iris dipt the 
woof. This on Valentine's eve he commended to 
the all-swallowing indiscriminate orifice — (O ignoble 
trust ! ) — of the common post ; but the humble me- 
dium did its duty, and from his watchful stand, the 
next morning he saw the cheerful messenger knock, 
and by and by the precious charge delivered. He saw, 
unseen, the happy girl unfold the Valentine, dance 
about, clap her hands, as one after one the pretty em- 
blems unfolded themselves. She danced about, not 
with light love, or foolish expectations, for she had no 
lover ; or, if she had, none she knew that could have 
created those bright images which delighted her. It was 



MY EELATIONS. 121 

more like some fairy present; a Godsend, as our famil- 
iarly pious ancestors termed a benefit received where 
the benefactor was unknown. It would do her no 
harm. It would do her good forever after. It is good 
to love the unknown. I only give this as a specimen 
of E. B. and his modest way of doing a concealed 
kindness. 

Good morrow to my Valentine, sings poor Ophelia ; 
and no better wish, but with better auspices, we wish 
to all faithfiil lovers, who are not too wise to despise 
old legends, but are content to rank themselves humble 
diocesans of old Bishop Valentine and his true church. 



MY RELATIONS. 



I AM arrived at that point of life at which a man 
may accomit it a blessing, as it is a singularity, if he 
have either of his parents surviving. I have not that 
felicity — and sometimes think feelingly of a passage in 
Browne's Christian Morals, where he speaks of a man 
that hath lived sixty or seventy years in the world. 
" In such a compass of time," he says, " a man may 
have a close apprehension what it is to be forgotten, 
when he hath hved to find none who could remember 
his father, or scarcely the friends of his youth, and may 
sensibly see with what a face in no long time Oblivion 
will look upon himself." 

I had an aunt, a dear and good one. She was one 
whom single blessedness had soured to the world. She 



122 MY EELATIONS. 

often used to say, that I was the only thing in it which 
she loved ; and, when she thought I was quitting it, 
she grieved over me with mother's tears. A partiality 
quite so exclusive my reason cannot altogether approve. 
She was from morning till night poring over good 
books and devotional exercises. Her favorite volumes 
were, Thomas a Kempis, in Stanhope's translation ; 
and a Roman Catholic Prayer-Book, with the matins 
and complines regularly set down, — terms which I was 
at that time too young to understand. She persisted 
in reading them, although admonished daily concern- 
ing their Papistical tendency; and went to church 
every Sabbath as a good Protestant should do. These 
were the only books she studied ; though, I think, at 
one period of her life, she told me she had read with 
great satisfaction the Adventures of an Unfortunate 
Young Nobleman. Finding the door of the chapel in 
Essex Street open one day, — it was in the infancy of 
that heresy, — she went in, liked the sermon and the 
manner of worship, and frequented it at intervals for 
some time after. She came not for doctrinal points, 
and' never missed them. With some little asperities in 
her constitution, which I have above hinted at, she was 
a steadfast, friendly being, and a fine old Christian. 
She was a woman of strong sense, and a shrewd mind 
— extraordinary at a repartee ; one of the few occa- 
sions of her breaking silence — else she did not much 
value wit. The only secular employment I remember 
to have seen her engaged in, was, the splitting of 
French beans, and dropping them into a china basin 
of fair water. The odor of those tender vegetables to 
this day comes back upon my sense, redolent of sooth- 
ing recollections. Certainly it is the most delicate of 
culinary operations. 



MY RELATIONS. 123 

Male aunts, as somebody calls them, I had none — 
to remember. By the uncle's side I may be said to 
have been born an orphan. Brother, or sister, I never 
had any — to know them. A sister, I think, that 
should have been Elizabeth, died in both our infancies. 
What a comfort, or what a care, may I not have 
missed in her ! But I have cousins sprinkled about 
in Hertfordshire, — besides two^ with whom I have been 
all my life in habits of the closest intimacy, and whom 
I may term cousins par excellence. These are James 
and Bridget Elia. They are older than myself by 
twelve, and ten years ; and neither of them seems dis- 
posed, in matters of advice and guidance, to waive any 
of the prerogatives which primogeniture confers. May 
they continue still in the same mind ; and when they 
shall be seventy-five, and seventy-three years old 
(I cannot spare them sooner), persist in treating me 
in my grand climacteric precisely as a stripling, or 
younger brother ! 

James is an inexplicable cousin. Nature hath her 
unities, which not every critic can penetrate ; or, if 
we feel, we cannot explain them. The pen of Yorick, 
and of none since his, could have drawn J. E. entire, — 
those fine Shandean lights and shades, which make up 
his story. I must limp after in my poor antithetical 
manner, as the fates have given me grace and talent. 
J. E. then — to the eye of a common observer at least 
— ■ seemeth made up of contradictory principles. The 
genuine child of impulse, the frigid philosopher of 
prudence — the phlegm of my cousin's doctrine is in- 
variably at war with his temperament, which is high 
sanguine. With always some fire-new project in his 
brain, J. E. is the systematic opponent of innovation, 



124 MY EELATIONS. 

and crier down of everything that has not stood the 
test of age and experiment. With a hundred fine 
notions chasing one another hourly in his fancy, he is 
startled at the least approach to the romantic in others ; 
and, determined by his own sense in everything, com- 
mends you to the guidance of common sense on all 
occasions. With a touch of the eccentric in all which 
he does, or says, he is only anxious that you should not 
commit yourself by doing anything absurd or singular. 
On my once letting slip at table that I was not fond 
of a certain popular dish, he begged me at any rate not 
to say so — for the world would think me mad. He 
disguises a passionate fondness for works of high art 
(whereof he hath amassed a choice collection), under 
the pretext of buying only to sell again — that his 
enthusiasm may give no encouragement to yours. Yet, 
if it were so, why does that piece of tender, pastoral 
Domenichino hang still by his wall ? — is the ball of 
his sight much more dear to him ? — or what picture- 
dealer can talk like him ? 

Whereas mankind in general are observed to warp 
their speculative conclusions to the bent of their indi- 
vidual humors, Ms theories are sure to be in diametrical 
opposition to his constitution. He is courageous as 
Charles of Sweden, upon instinct ; chary of his person 
upon principle, as a travelling Quaker. He has been 
preaching up to me, all my life, the doctrine of bowing 
to the great — the necessity of forms, and manner, to a 
man's getting on in the world. He himself never aims 
at either, that I can discover, — and has a spirit, that 
would stand upright in the presence of the Cham of 
Tartary. It is pleasant to hear him discourse of pa- 
tience — extolling it as the truest wisdom, — and to see 



MY RELATIONS, 125 

him during the last seven minutes that his dinner is 
getting ready. Nature never ran up in her haste a 
more restless piece of workmanship than when she 
moulded this impetuous cousin, — and Art never turned 
out a more elaborate orator than he can display himself 
to be, upon this favorite topic of the advantages of quiet 
and contentedness in the state, whatever it be, that we 
are placed in. He is triumphant on this theme, when 
he has you safe in one of those short stages that ply for 
the western road, in a very obstructing manner, at the 
foot of John Murray's street, — where you get in when 
it is empty, and are expected to wait till the vehicle 
hath completed her just freight, — a trying three quar- 
ters of an hour to some people. He wonders at your 
fidgetiness, — " where could we be better than we are, 
thus sitting^ thus consulting f " — " prefers, for his part, 
a state of rest to locomotion," — with an eye all the 
while upon the coachman, — till at length, waxing out 
of all patience, at your want of it, he breaks out into a 
pathetic remonstrance at the fellow for detaining us so 
long over the time which he had professed, and declares 
peremptorily, that " the gentleman in the coach is de- 
termined to get out, if he does not drive on that in- 
stant." 

Very quick at inventing an argument, or detecting 
a sophistry, he is incapable of attending gou in any 
chain of arguing. Indeed, he makes wild work with 
logic ; and seems to jump at most admirable conclu- 
sions by some process, not at all akin to it. Conso- 
nantly enough to this, he hath been heard to deny, upon 
certain occasions, that there exists such a faculty at all 
in man as reason ; and wondereth how man came first 
to have a conceit of it, — enforcing his negation with 



126 MY KELATIONS. 

all the might of reasoning he is master of. He has 
some speculative notions against laughter, and will 
maintain that laughing is not natural to him^ — when 
peradventure the next moment his lungs shall crow like 
Chanticleer. He says some of the best things in the 
world — and declareth that wit is his aversion. It was 
he who said, upon seeing the Eton boys at play in their 
grounds, — Wliat a pity to tJiinh^ that these fine ingenuous 
lads in a feiv years will all be changed into frivolous 
Members of Parliament! 

His youth was fiery, glowing, tempestuous, — and in 
age he discovereth no symptom of cooling. This is 
that which I admire in him. I hate people who meet 
Time half-way. I am for no compromise with that 
inevitable spoiler. While he lives, J. E. will take his 
swing. It does me good, as I walk towards the street 
of my daily avocation, on some fine May morning, to 
meet him marching in a quite opposite direction, with 
a jolly handsome presence, and shining sanguine face 
that indicates some purchase in his eye — a Claude — 
or a Hobbima, — for much of his enviable leisure is 
consumed at Christie's and Phillips's — or where not, 
to pick up pictures, and such gauds. On these occa- 
sions he mostly stoppeth me, to read a short lecture 
on the advantage a person like me possesses above 
himself, in having his time occupied with business 
which he must do, — assureth me that he often feels it 
liang heavy on his hands — wishes he had fewer holi- 
days — and goes oflP — Westward Ho ! — chanting a 
tune, to Pall Mall, — perfectly convinced that he has 
convinced me, — while I proceed in my opposite direc- 
tion, tuneless. 

It is pleasant again to see this Professor of IndifFer- 



MY RELATIONS. 127 

ence doing the honors of his new purchase, when he 
has fairly housed it. You must view it in every light, 
till he has found the best — placing it at this distance, 
and at that, but always suiting the focus of your sight 
to his own. You must spy at it through your fingers, 
to catch the aerial perspective, — though you assure 
him that to you the landscape shows much more agree- 
able without that artifice. Woe be to the luckless 
wight, who does not only not respond to his rapture, 
but who should drop an unseasonable intimation of 
preferring one of his anterior bargains to the present ! 
— The last is always his best hit — his " Cynthia of 
the minute." — Alas! how many a mild Madonna 
have I known to come in — a Raphael ! — keep its as- 
cendancy for a few brief moons, — then, after certain 
intermedial degradations, from the front drawing-room 
to the back gallery, thence to the dark parlor, — 
adopted in turn by each of the Carracci, under succes- 
sive lowering ascriptions of filiation, mildly breaking its 
fall, — consigned to the oblivious lumber-room, go out 
at last a Lucca Giordano, or plain Carlo Maratti ! — 
which things when I beheld — musing upon the chances 
and mutabilities of fate below, hath made me to reflect 
upon the altered condition of great personages, or that 
woful Queen of Richard the Second — 

set forth in pomp, 
She came adorned hither hke sweet May. 
Sent back like Hallowmas or shortest day. 

With great love for you^ J. E. hath but a limited 
sympathy with what you feel or do. He lives in a 
world of his own, and makes slender guesses at what 
passes in your mind. He never pierces the marrow of 



128 MY RELATIONS. 

your habits. He will tell an old established play-goer, 
that Mr. Such-a-one, of So-and-so (naming one of the 
theatres,) is a very lively comedian — as a piece of 
news ! He advertised me but the other day of some 
pleasant green lanes which he had found out for me, 
knowing me to he a great walker^ in my own immediate 
vicinity — who have haunted the identical spot any 
time these twenty years ! He has not much respect 
for that class of feelings which goes by the name of 
sentimental. He applies the definition of real evil to 
bodily sufferings exclusively — and rejecteth all others 
as imaginary. He is affected by the sight, or the bare 
supposition, of a creature in pain, to a degree which I 
have never witnessed out of womankind. A consti- 
tutional acuteness to this class of sufferings may in part 
account for this. The animal tribe in particular he 
taketh under his especial protection. A broken-winded 
or spur-galled horse is sure to find an advocate in him. 
An overloaded ass is his client forever. He is the 
apostle to the brute kind — the never-failing friend of 
those who have none to care for them. The contem- 
plation of a lobster boiled, or eels skinned alive^ will 
wring him so, that " all for pity he could die." It 
will take the savor from his palate, and the rest from 
his pillow for days and nights. With the intense feel- 
ing of Thomas Clarkson, he wanted only the steadiness 
of pursuit, and unity of purpose, of that " true yoke- 
fellow with Time," to have effected as much for the 
Animal^ as he hath done for the Negro Creation, But 
my uncontrollable cousin is but imperfectly formed for 
purposes which demand cooperation. He cannot wait. 
His amelioration plans must be ripened in a day. For 
this reason he has cut but an equivocal figure in be- 



MACKEEY END, IN^HERTFOEDSHIEE. 120 

nevolent societies, and combinations for the alleviation 
of human sufferings. His zeal constantly makes him 
to outrun, and put out, his coadjutors. He thinks of 
relieving, — while they think of debating. He was 
blackballed out of a society for the Relief of . . . 
, because the fervor of his humanity toiled 
beyond the formal apprehension, and creeping pro- 
cesses of his associates. I shall always consider this 
distinction as a patent of nobility in the Elia family ! 

Do I mention these seeming inconsistencies to smile 
at, or upbraid my unique cousin ? Marry, heaven, 
and all good manners, and the understanding that 
should be between kinsfolk, forbid ! With all the 
strangenesses of this strangest of the JElias — I would 
not have him in one jot or tittle other than he is ; 
neither would I barter or exchange my wild kinsman 
for the most exact, regular, and every way consistent 
kinsman breathing. 

In my next, reader, I may perhaps give you some 
account of my cousin Bridget — if you are not already 
surfeited with cousins — and take you by the hand, if 
you are willing to go with us, on an excursion which 
we made a summer or two since, in search of more 
cousins, — 

Through the green plains of pleasant Hertfordshire. 



MACKERY END, IN HEKTFORDSHIRE. 

Bridget Elia has been my housekeeper for many 
a long year. I have obligations to Bridget, extending 

VOL. III. 9 



130 MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 

beyond the period of memory. We house together, 
old bachelor and maid, in a sort of double singleness ; 
with such tolerable comfort, upon the whole, that I, for 
one, find in myself no sort of disposition to go out 
upon the mountains, with the rash king's offspring, to 
bewail my celibacy. We agree pretty w^ell in our 
tastes and habits — yet so, as " with a difference." 
We are generally in harmony, with occasional bicker- 
ines — as it should be amonsi; near relations. Our 
sympathies are rather understood, than expressed ; and 
once, upon my dissembling a tone in my voice more 
kind than ordinary, my cousin burst into tears, and 
complained that I was altered. We are both great 
readers in different directions. While I am hanging 
over (for the thousandth time) some passage in old 
Burton, or one of his strange contemporaries, she is 
abstracted in some modern tale, or adventure, whereof 
our common reading-table is daily fed with assiduously 
fresh supplies. Narrative teases me. I have little 
concern in the progress of events. She must have a 
story — well, ill, or indifferently told — so there be life 
stirring in it, and plenty of good or evil accidents. 
The fluctuations of fortune in fiction — and almost in 
real life — have ceased to interest, or operate but dully 
upon me. Out-of-the-way humors and opinions — 
heads with some diverting twist in them — the oddities 
of authorship please me most. My cousin has a native 
disrelish of anything that sounds odd or bizarre. Noth- 
ing goes down with her that is quaint, irregular, or out 
of the road of common sympathy. She " holds Nature 
more clever." I can pardon her blindness to the beau- 
tiful obliquities of the Religio Medici ; but she must 
apologize to me for certain disrespectful insinuations, 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 131 

which she has been pleased to throw out latterly, touch- 
ing the intellectuals of a clear favorite of mine, of the 
last century but one, — the thrice noble, chaste, and 
virtuous, — but again somewhat fantastical, and origi- 
nal-brained, generous Margaret Newcastle. 

It has been the lot of my cousin, often er perhaps 
than I could have wished, to have had for her associates 
and mine, freethinkers, ■ — leaders, and disciples, of 
novel philosophies and systems ; but she neither wran- 
gles with, nor accepts their opinions. That which was 
good and venerable to her, when a child, retains its 
authority over her mind still. She never juggles or 
plays tricks with her understanding. 

We are both of us inclined to be a little too posi- 
tive ; and I have observed the result of our disputes to 
be almost uniformly this, — that in matters of fact, 
dates, and cn-cumstances, it turns out, that I was in the 
right, and my cousin in the wrong. But where we 
have differed upon moral points ; upon something 
proper to be done, or let alone ; whatever heat of op- 
position, or steadiness of conviction, I set out with, I 
am sure always, in the long-run, to be brought over to 
her way of thinking. 

I must touch upon the foibles of my kinswoman 
with a gentle hand, for Bridget does not like to be told 
of her faults. She hath an awkward trick (to say no 
worse of it) of reading in company ; at which times 
she will answer yes or no to a question, without fully 
understanding its purport, — which is provoking, and 
derogatory in the highest degree to the dignity of the 
putter of the said question. Her presence or mind is 
equa,! to the most pressing trials of life, but will some- 
times desert her upon trifling occasions. When the 



132 MACKEEY END, IN HERTFORDSHIEE. 

purpose requires it, and is a thing of moment, she can 
speak to it greatly ; but in matters which are not stuff 
of the conscience, she hath been known sometimes to 
let slip a word less seasonably. 

Her education in youth was not much attended to ; 
and she happily missed all that train of female garni- 
ture, which passeth by the name of accomplishments. 
She was tumbled early, by accident or design, into a 
spacious closet of good old English readmg, without 
much selection or prohibition, and browsed at will upon 
that fair and wholesome pasturage. Had I twenty 
girls, they should, be brought up exactly in this fashion. 
I know not whether their chance in wedlock might not 
be diminished by it ; but I can answer for it, that it 
makes (if the worst come to the worst) most incompar- 
able old maids. 

In a season of distress, she is the truest comforter ; 
but in the teasing accidents, and minor perplexities, 
which do not call out the will to meet them, she some- 
times maketh matters worse by an excess of participa- 
tion. If she does not always divide your trouble, upon 
the pleasanter occasions of life she is sure always to 
treble your satisfaction. She is excellent to be at a 
play with, or upon a visit ; but best, when she goes a 
journey with you. 

We made an excursion together a few summers 
since, into Hertfordshire, to beat up the quarters of 
some of our less-known relations in that fine com 
country. 

The oldest thing I remember is Mackery End ; or 
Mackarel End, as it is spelt, perhaps more properly, in 
some old maps of Hertfordshire ; a farm-house, — de- 
lightfully situated within a gentle walk from Wheat- 



MACKEEY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 133 

hampstead. I can just remember having been there, 
on a visit to a great-aunt, when I was a child, under 
the care of Bridget ; who, as I have said, is older than 
myself hj some ten years. I wish that I could throw 
into a heap the remainder of our joint existences ; 
that we might share them in equal division. But that 
is impossible. The house was at that time in the occu- 
pation of a substantial yeoman, who had married my 
grandmother's sister. His name was Gladman. My 
grandmother was a Bruton, married to a Field. The 
Gladmans and the Brutons are still flourishino; in that 
part of the country, but the Fields are almost extinct. 
More than forty years had elapsed since the visit I 
speak of; and, for the greater portion of that period, 
we had lost sight of the other two branches also. Who 
or what sort of persons inherited Mackery End — kin- 
dred or strange folk — we were afraid almost to conjec- 
ture, but determined some day to explore. 

By somewhat a circuitous route, taking the noble 
park at Luton in our way from Saint Albans, we ar- 
rived at the spot of our anxious curiosity about noon. 
The sight of the old farm-house, though every trace of 
it was effaced from my recollection, affected me with a 
pleasure which I had not experienced for many a year. 
For though I had forgotten it, we had never forgotten 
being there together, and we had been talking about 
Mackery End all our lives, till memory on my part be- 
came mocked with a phantom of itself, and I thought 
T knew the aspect of a place, which, when present, O 
how unlike it was to that which I had conjured up so 
many times instead of it ! 

Still the air breathed balmily about it ; the season 
was in the " heart of June," and I could say with the 
poet, — 



134 MACKEEY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 

But thou, that didst appear so fair 

To fond imagination, 
Dost rival in the light of day 

Her delicate creation ! 



Bridget's was more a waking bliss than mine, for 
she easily remembered her old acquaintance again, — 
some altered features, of course, a little grudged at. 
At first, indeed, she was ready to disbelieve for joy ; 
but the scene soon reconfirmed itself in her affections, 
— and she traversed every outpost of the old mansion, 
to the wood-house, the orchard, the place where the 
pigeon-house had stood (house and birds were alike 
flown) — with a breathless impatience of recognition, 
which was more pardonable perhaps than decorous at 
the age of fifty odd. But Bridget in some things is 
behind her years. 

The only thing left was to get into the house, — and 
that was a difficulty which to me singly would have 
been insurmountable ; for I am terribly shy in making 
myself known to strangers and out-of-date kinsfolk. 
Love, stronger than scruple, winged my cousin in with- 
out me ; but she soon returned with a creature that 
might have sat to a sculptor for the image of Welcome. 
It was the youngest of the Gladmans ; who, by mar- 
riage with a Bruton, had become mistress of the old 
mansion. A comely brood are the Brutons. Six of 
them, females, were noted as the handsomest young 
women in the county. But this adopted Bruton, in 
my mind, was better than they all — more comely. 
She was born too late to have remembered me. She 
just recollected in early life to have had her cousin 
Bridget once pointed out to her, climbing a stile. But 
the name of kindred, and of cousinship, was enough. 



MACKERY END, IN HERTFORDSHIRE. 135 

Those slender ties, that prove sKght as gossamer m the 
rending atmosphere of a metropoKs, bind faster, as we 
found it, in hearty, homely, loving Hertfordshire. In 
five minutes we were as thoroughly acquainted as if we 
had been born and bred up together; were familiar, 
even to the calling each other by our Christian names. 
So Christians should call one another. To have seen 
Bridacet. and her — it was like the meetino; of the two 
scriptural cousins ! There was a grace and dignity, an 
amplitude of form and stature, answering to her mind, 
in this farmer's wife, which would have shined in a 
palace — or so we thought it. We were made wel- 
come by husband and wife equally — we, and our 
friend that was with us. I had almost forgotten him, 
- — but B. F. will not so soon forget that meeting, if 
peradventure he shall read this on the far distant shores 
where the kano;aroo haunts. The fatted calf was made 
ready, or rather was already so, as if in anticipation of 
our coming; and, after an appropriate glass of native 
wine, never let me forget with what honest pride this 
hospitable cousin made us proceed to Wheathampstead, 
to introduce us (as some new-found rarity) to her 
mother and sister Gladmans, who did indeed know 
something more of us, at a time when she almost knew 
nothing. With what corresponding kindness we were 
received by them also, — how Bridget's memory, ex- 
alted by the occasion, warmed into a thousand half- 
obliterated recollections of things and persons, to my 
utter astonishment, and her own, — and to the astound- 
ment of B. F. who sat by, almost the only thing that 
was not a cousin there, — old effaced images of more 
than half-forgotten names and circumstances stiU crowd- 
ing back upon her, as words written in lemon come out 



136 MY FIRST PLAY. 

upon exposure to a friendly warmth, — when I forget 
all this, then may my country cousins forget me ; and 
Bridget no more remember, that in the days of weak- 
ling infancy I was her tender charge, — as I have been 
her care in foolish manhood since, — in those pretty 
pastoral walks, long ago, about Mackery End, in Hert- 
fordshire. 



MY FIRST PLAY. 



At the north end of Cross Court there yet stands a 
portal, of some architectural pretensions, though re- 
duced to humble use, serving at present for an entrance 
to a printing-office. This old door-way, if you are 
young, reader, you may not know was the identical pit 
entrance to old Drury, — Garrick's Drury, — all of it 
that is left. I never pass it without shaking some forty 
years from off my shoulders, recurring to the evening 
when I passed through it to see my first play. The 
afternoon had been wet, and the condition of our going 
(the elder folks and myself) was, that the rain should 
cease. With what a beating heart did I watch fi'om 
the window the puddles, from the stillness of which I 
was taught to prognosticate the desired cessation ! I 
seem to remember the last spurt, and the glee with 
which I ran to announce it. 

We went with orders, which my godfather F. had 
sent us. He kept the oil-shop (now Davies's) at the 
corner of Featherstone Buildings, in Holborn. F. was 
a tall grave person, lofty in speech, and had pretensions 



MY FIEST PLAY. 137 

above his rank. He associated in those days with John 
Palmer, the comedian, whose gait and bearing he 
seemed to copy ; if John (which is quite as hkely) did 
not rather borrow somewhat of his manner from my 
godfather. He was also known to, and visited by 
Sheridan. It was to his house in Holborn that young 
Brinsley brought his first wife on her elopement with 
him from a boarding-school at Bath, — the beautiful 
Maria Linley. My parents were present (over a qua- 
drille table) when he arrived in the evening with his 
harmonious charge. From either of these connections 
it may be inferred that my godfather could command 
an order for the then Drury Lane theatre at pleasure, — 
and, indeed, a pretty liberal issue of those cheap billets, 
in Brinsley's easy autograph, I have heard him say 
was the sole remuneration which he had received for 
many years' nightly illumination of the orchestra and 
various avenues of that theatre, — and he was content 
it should be so. The honor of Sheridan's familiarity 
— or supposed familiarity — was better to my god- 
father than money. 

F. was the most gentlemanly of oilmen ; grandilo- 
quent, yet courteous. His delivery of the commonest 
matters of fact was Ciceronian. He had two Latin 
words almost constantly in his mouth, (how odd sounds 
Latin from an oilman's lips ! ) which my better knowl- 
edge since has enabled me to correct. In strict pro- 
nunciation they should have been sounded vice versa, — 
but in those young years they impressed me with more 
awe than they would now do, read aright from Seneca 
or Varro, — in his own peculiar pronunciation, monosyl- 
labically elaborated, or Anglicized, into something like 
verse verse. By an imposing manner, and the help of 



138 MY FIRST PLAY. 

these distorted syllables, he climbed (but that was 
little) to the highest parochial honors which St. An- 
drew's has to bestow. 

He is dead, — and thus much I thought due to his 
memory, both for my first orders (little wondrous talis- 
mans ! — slight keys, and insignificant to outward sight, 
but opening to me more than Arabian paradises !) and 
moreover that by his testamentary beneficence I came 
into possession of the only landed property which 
I could ever call my own, — situate near the road- 
way village of pleasant Puckeridge, in Hertfordshire. 
When I journeyed down to take possession, and planted 
foot on my own ground, the stately habits of the donor 
descended upon me, and I strode (shall I confess the 
A'anity ?) with larger paces over my allotment of three 
quarters of an acre, with its commodious mansion in 
the midst, with the feeling of an English freeholder 
that all betwixt sky and centre was my own. The 
estate has passed into more prudent hands, and nothing 
but an agrarian can restore it. 

In those days were pit orders. Beshrew the uncom- 
fortable manager who abolished them ! — with one of 
these we went. I remember the waiting at the door 
— not that which is left — but between that and an 
inner door in shelter, — O when shall I be such an ex- 
pectant again ! — with the cry of nonpareils, an indis- 
pensable playhouse accompaniment in those days. As 
near as I can recollect, the fashionable pronunciation 
of the theatrical fruiteresses then was, " Chase some 
oranges, chase some numparels, chase a bill of the 
play ; " — chase pro chuse. But when we got in, and 
I beheld the green curtain that veiled a heaven to my 
imagination, which was soon to be disclosed, — the 



MY FIEST PLAY. 139 

breathless anticipations I endured ! I had seen some- 
thing like it in the plate prefixed to Troilus and Cres- 
sida, in Rowe's Shakspeare, — the tent scene with 
Diomede, — and a sight of that plate can always bring 
back in a measure the feeling of that evening. The 
boxes at that time, full of well-dressed women of 
quality, projected over the pit ; and the pilasters reach- 
ing down were adorned with a glistering substance 
(I know not what) under glass (as it seemed), re- 
sembling — a homely fancy, — ■ but I judged it to be 
sugar-candy, — yet, to my raised imagination, divested 
of its homelier qualities, it appeared a glorified candy ! 
The orchestra lights at length arose, those " fair Au- 
roras ! " Once the bell sounded. It was to ring out 
yet once again, — and, incapable of the anticipation, 
I reposed my shut eyes in a sort of resignation upon 
the maternal lap. It rang the second time. The 
curtain drew up, — I was not past six years old, and 
the play was Artaxerxes ! 

I had dabbled a little in the Universal History, — 
the ancient part of it, — and here was the court of 
Persia. It was being admitted to a sight of the past. 
I took no proper interest in the action going on, for I 
understood not its import, — but I heard the word 
Darius, and I was in the midst of Daniel. All feel- 
ing was absorbed in vision. Gorgeous vests, gardens, 
palaces, princesses, passed before me. I knew not 
players. I was in Persepolis for the time, and the 
burning idol of their devotion almost converted me 
into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed 
those significations to be something more than ele- 
mental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream. 
No such pleasure has since visited me but in dreams. 



140 MY FIRST PLAY. 

Harlequin's invasion followed ; where, I remember, 
tlie transformation of tlie magistrates into reverend 
beldams seemed to me a piece of grave historic justice, 
and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a 
verity as the legend of St. Denys. 

The next play to which I was taken was the Lady 
of the Manor, of which, with the exception of some 
scenery, very faint traces are left in my memory. It 
was followed by a pantomine, called Lun's Ghost — a 
satiric touch, I apprehend, upon Rich, not long since 
dead — but to my apprehension (too sincere for satire), 
Lun was as remote a piece of antiquity as Lud — the 
father of a line of Harlequins — transmitting his dag- 
ger of lath (the wooden sceptre) through countless 
ages. I saw the primeval Motley come from his silent 
tomb in a ghastly vest of white patchwork, like the 
apparition of a dead rainbow. So Harlequins (thought 
I) look when they are dead. 

My third play followed in quick succession. It was 
the Way of the World. I think I must have sat at 
it as grave as a judge ; for, I remember, the hysteric 
affectations of good Lady Wishfort affected me like 
some solemn tragic passion. Robinson Crusoe fol- 
lowed ; in which Crusoe, man Friday, and the parrot, 
were as good and authentic as in the story. The 
clownery and pantaloonery of these pantomimes have 
clean passed out of my head. I believe, I no more 
laughed at them, than at the same age I should have 
been disposed to laugh at the grotesque Gothic heads 
(seeming to me then replete with devout meaning) 
that gape, and grin, in stone around the inside of the 
old Round Church (my church) of the Templars. 

I saw these plays in the season 1781-2, when I was 



MY FIRST PLAY. 141 

from six to seven years old. After the intervention 
of six or seven otlier years (for at school all play-going 
was inhibited) I again entered the doors of a theatre. 
That old Artaxerxes evening had never done ringing 
in my fancy. I expected the same feelings to come 
again with the same occasion. But we differ from 
ourselves less at sixty and sixteen, than the latter does 
from six. In that interval what had I not lost ! At 
the first period I knew nothing, understood nothing, 
discriminated nothing. I felt all, loved all, wondered 
all — 

Was nourished, I could not tell how, — 

I had left the temple a devotee, and was returned a 
rationalist. The same things were there materially ; 
but the emblem, the reference, was gone ! The green 
curtain was no longer a veil, drawn between two 
worlds, the unfolding of which was to bring back past 
ages to present a " royal ghost," — but a certain quan- 
tity of green baize, which was to separate the audience 
for a given time from certain of their fellow-men who 
were to come forward and pretend those parts. The 
lights — the orchestra lights — came up a clumsy ma- 
chinery. The first ring, and the second ring, was now 
but a trick of the prompter's bell — which had been, 
like the note of the cuckoo, a phantom of a voice, no 
hand seen or guessed at which ministered to its warn- 
ing. The actors were men and women painted. I 
thought the fault was in them ; but it was in myself, 
and the alteration which those many centuries — of 
six short twelvemonths — had wrought in me. Per- 
haps it was fortunate for me that the play of the even- 
ing was but an indifferent comedy, as it gave me time 
to crop some unreasonable expectations, which might 



142 MODERN GALLANTRY. 

have interfered with the genuine emotions with which 
I was soon after enabled to enter upon the first appear- 
ance to me of Mrs. Siddons in Isabella. Comparison 
and retrospection soon yielded to the present attraction 
of the scene; and the theatre became to me, upon a 
new stock, the most delightful of recreations. 



MODERN GALLANTRY. 

In comparing modern with ancient manners, we are 
pleased to compliment ourselves upon the point of gal- 
lantry; a certain obsequiousness, or deferential respect, 
which we are supposed to pay to females, as females. 

I shall believe that this principle actuates our con- 
duct, when I can forget, that in the nineteenth century, 
of the era from which we date our civility, we are but 
just beginning to leave off the very frequent practice 
of whipping females in public, in common with the 
coarsest male offenders. 

I shall believe it to be influential, when I can shut 
my eyes to the fact, that in England women are still 
occasionally — hanged. 

I shall believe in it, when actresses are no longer 
subject to be hissed off a stage by gentlemen. 

I shall believe in it, when Dorimant hands a fishwife 
across the kennel ; or assists the apple- woman to pick 
up her wandering fruit, which some unlucky dray has 
just dissipated. 

I shall believe in it, when the Dorimants in humbler 



MODERN GALLANTRY. 143 

life, who would be thought in their way notable adepts 
in this refinement, shall act upon it in places where 
they are not known, or think themselves not observed, 
— when I shall see the traveller for some rich trades- 
man part with his admired box-coat, to spread it over 
the defenceless shoulders of the poor woman, who is 
passing to her parish on the roof, of the same stage- 
coach with him, drenched in the rain, — when I shall 
no longer see a woman standing up in the pit of a 
London theatre, till she is sick and faint with the 
exertion, with men about her, seated at their ease, 
and jeering at her distress ; till one, that seems to 
have more manners or conscience than the rest, signifi- 
cantly declares " she should be welcome to his seat, 
if she were a little younger and handsomer." Place 
this dapper warehouse-man, or that rider, in a circle of 
their own female acquaintance, and you shall confess 
you have not seen a politer-bred man in Lothbury. 

Lastly, I shall begin to believe that there is some 
such principle influencing our conduct, when more 
than one half of the drudgery and coarse servitude of 
the world shall cease to be performed by women. 

Until that day comes, I shall never believe this 
boasted point to be anything more than a conventional 
fiction ; a pageant got up between the sexes, in a 
certain rank, and at a certain time of life, in which 
both find their account equally. 

I shall be even disposed to rank it among the salu- 
tary fictions of life, when in polite circles I shall see 
the same attentions paid to age as to youth, to homely 
features as to handsome, to coarse complexions as to 
clear, — to the woman, as she is a woman, not as she is 
a beauty, a fortune, or a title. 



144 MODERN GALLANTRY. 

I shall believe it to be sometbing more than a name, 
when a well-dressed gentleman in a well-dressed com- 
pany can advert to the topic o^ female old age without 
exciting, and intending to excite, a sneer ; — when the 
phrases " antiquated virginity," and such a one has 
" overstood her market," pronounced in good com- 
pany, shall raise immediate offence in man, or woman, 
that shall hear them spoken. 

Joseph Paice, of Bread-street Hill, merchant, aiid 
one of the Directors of the South Sea Company, — the 
same to whom Edwards, the Shakspeare commentator, 
has addressed a fine sonnet, — was the only pattern of 
consistent gallantry I have met with. He took me 
under his shelter at an early age, and bestowed some 
pains upon me. I owe to his precepts and example 
whatever there is of the man of business (and that 
is not much) in my composition. It was not his fault 
that I did not profit more. Though bred a Presby- 
terian, and brought up a merchant, he was the finest 
gentleman of his time. He had not one system of at- 
tention to females in the drawing-room, and another in 
the shop, or at the stall. I do not mean that he made 
no distinction. But he never lost sight of sex, or over- 
looked it in the casualties of a disadvantageous situa- 
tion. I have seen him stand bareheaded — smile if you 
please — to a poor servant-girl, while she has been in- 
quiring of him the way to some street — in such a 
posture of unforced civility, as neither to embarrass her 
in tlj.e acceptance, nor himself in the offer, of it. He 
was no dangler, in the common acceptation of the word, 
after women ; but he reverenced and upheld, in every 
form in which it came before him, womanhood. I have 
seen him — nay, smile not — tenderly escorting a mar- 



MODERN GALLANTRY. 145 

ket-woman, whom he had encountered in a shower, 
exalting his umbrella over her poor basket of fruit, that 
it might receive no damage, with as much carefulness 
as if she had been a countess. To the reverend form 
of Female Eld he would yield the wall (though it were 
to an ancient beggar-woman) with more ceremony 
than we can afford to show our grandams. He was 
ihe Preux Chevalier of Age ; the Sir Calidore, or Sir 
'J'ristan, to those who have no Calidores or Tristans to 
defend them. The roses, that had long faded thence, 
still bloomed for him in those withered and yellow 
cheeks. 

He was never married, but in his youth he paid his 
addresses to the beautiful Susan Winstanley — old 
Winstanley's daughter of Clapton — who dying in the 
early days of their courtship, confirmed in him the 
resolution of perpetual bachelorship. It was during 
their short courtship, he told me, that he had been 
one day treating his mistress with a profusion of civil 
speeches — the common gallantries — to which kind of 
thing she had hitherto manifested no repugnance — but 
in this instance with no eflPect. He could not obtain 
from her a decent acknowledgment in return. She 
rather seemed to resent his compliments. He could 
not set it down to caprice, for the lady had always 
shown herself above that littleness. When he ven- 
tured on the following day, finding her a little better 
humored, to expostulate with her on her coldness of 
yesterday, she confessed, with her usual frankness, that 
she had no sort of dislike to his attentions ; that she 
could even endure some high-flown compliments ; that 
a young woman placed in her situation had a right to 
expect all sort of civil things said to her; that she 

VOL. III. 10 



146 MODERN GALLANTRY. 

hoped slie could digest a dose of adulation, short of 
insincerity, with as little injury to her humility as most 
young women ; but that — a little before he had com- 
menced his compliments — she had overheard him by 
accident, in rather rough language, rating a young 
woman, who had not brought home his cravats quite to 
the appointed time, and she thought to herself, " As I 
am Miss Susan Winstanley, and a young lady, — - a re- 
puted beauty, and known to be a fortune, — I can have 
my choice of the finest speeches from the mouth of this 
very fine gentleman who is courting me, — but if I had 
been poor Mary Such-a-one (naming the milliner)^ — 
and had failed of bringing home the cravats to the ap- 
pointed hour — though perhaps I had sat up half the 
night to forward them — what sort of compliments 
should I have received then ? And my woman's pride 
came to my assistance ; and I thought, that if it were 
only to do me honor, a female, like myself, might have 
received handsomer usage ; and I Avas determined not 
to accept any fine speeches, to the compromise of that 
sex, the belonging to which was after all my strongest 
claim and title to them." 

I think the lady discovered both generosity, and a 
just way of thinking, in this rebuke which she gave 
her lover ; and I have sometimes imagined, that the 
uncommon strain of courtesy, which through life reg- 
ulated the actions and behavior of my friend towards 
all of womankind indiscriminately, owed its happy 
origin to this seasonable lesson from the lips of his 
lamented mistress. 

I wish the whole female world would entertain the 
same notion of these things that Miss Winstanley 
showed. Then we should see something of the spirit 



THE OLD BENCHEES OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 147 

of consistent gallantry ; and no longer witness the 
anomaly of the same man — a pattern of true polite- 
ness to a wife — of cold contempt, or rudeness, to a 
sister — the idolater of his female mistress — the dis- 
parager and despiser of his no less female aunt, or 
unfortunate — still female — maiden cousin. Just so 
much respect as a woman derogates from her own 
sex, in whatever condition placed — her handmaid, 
or dependant — she deserves to have diminished from 
herself on that score ; and probably will feel the 
diminution, when youth, and beauty, and advantages, 
not inseparable from sex, shall lose of their attrac- 
tion. What a woman should demand of a man in 
courtship, or after it, is first — respect for her as she 
is a woman ; — and next to that — to be respected 
by him above all other women*. But let her stand 
upon her female character as upon a foundation ; 
and let the attentions, incident to individual prefer- 
ence, be so many pretty additaments and ornaments 
— as many, and as fanciful, as you please — to that 
main structure. Let her first lesson be with sweet 
Susan Winstanley — to reverence her sex. 



THE OLD BENCHEES OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 

I WAS bom, and passed the first seven years of 
my life, in the Temple. Its church, its halls, its 
gardens, its fountain, its river, I had almost said, — 
for in those young years, what was this king of rivers 



148 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 

to me but a stream that watered our pleasant places? 
— these are of my oldest recollections. I repeat, to 
this day, no verses to myself more frequently, or 
with kindlier emotion, than those of Spenser, where 
he speaks of this spot. 

There when they came, whereas those bricky towers, 
The which on Themmes brode aged back doth ride, 
Where now the studious lawyers have their bowers, 
There whylome wont the Templer knights to bide, 
Till they decayed through pride. 

Indeed, it is the most elegant spot in the metropolis. 
What a transition for a countryman visiting London 
for the first time — the passing from the crowded 
Strand or Fleet Street, by unexpected avenues, into 
its magnificent ample squares, its classic green re- 
cesses I What a cheerful, liberal look hath that por- 
tion of it, which, from three sides, overlooks the greater 
garden ; that goodly pile 

Of building strong, albeit of Paper hight, 

confronting with piassy contrast, the lighter, older, 
more fantastically shrouded one, named of Harcourt, 
with the cheerftil Crown-office Row (place of my 
kindly engendure), right opposite the stately stream, 
which washes the garden-foot with her yet scarcely 
trade-polluted waters, and seems but just weaned 
from her Twickenham Naiads ! a man would give 
something to have been born in such places. What a 
collegiate aspect has that fine Elizabethan hall, where 
the fountain plays, which I have made to rise and fall, 
how many times ! to the astoundment of the young 
urchins, my contemporaries, who, not being able to 
guess at its recondite machinery, were almost tempted 



THE OLD BENCHEES OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 149 

to hail the wondrous work as magic I What an antique 
air had the now almost effaced sundials, with their 
moral inscriptions, seeming coevals with that Time 
which they measured, and to take their revelations of 
its flight immediately from heaven, holding correspond- 
ence with the fountain of light ! How would the dark 
line steal imperceptibly on, watched by the eye of 
childhood, eager to detect its movement, never catched, 
nice as an evanescent cloud, or the first arrests of 
sleep ! 

Ah ! yet doth beauty Uke a dial-hand 

Steal from his figure, and no pace perceived ! 

What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous 
embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn 
dulness of communication, compared with the simple 
altar-like structure, and silent heart-language of the 
old dial I It stood as the garden god of Christian 
gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished ? If 
its business-use be superseded by more elaborate in- 
ventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded 
for its continuance. It spoke of moderate labors, of 
pleasures not protracted after sunset, of temperance, 
and good hours. It was the primitive clock, the horo- 
loge of the first world. Adam could scarce have 
missed it in Paradise. It was the measure appropri- 
ate for sweet plants and flowers to spring by, for the 
birds to apportion their silver warblings by, for flocks 
to pasture and be led to fold by. The shepherd 
" carved it out quaintly in the sun ; " and, turning 
philosopher by the very occupation, provided it with 
mottoes more touching than tombstones. It was a 
pretty device of the gardener, recorded by Marvell, 
who, in the days of artificial gardening, made a dial 



150 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 

out of herbs and flowers. I must quote his verses a 
little higher up, for they are full, as all his serious 
poetry was, of a witty delicacy. They will not come 
in awkwardly, I hope, in a talk of fountains, and sun- 
dials. He is speaking of sweet garden scenes : — 

What wondrous life is this I lead ! 

Ripe apples drop about my head. 

The luscious clusters of the vine 

Upon my mouth do crush their "wine. 

The nectarine, and curious peach, 

Into my hands themselves do reach. 

Stumbling on melons, as I pass, 

Insnared with flowers, I fall on grass. 

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less 

Withdraws into its happiness. 

The mind, that ocean, where each kind 

Does straight its own resemhlance find; 

Yet it creates, transcending these, 

Far other worlds, and other seas, 

Annihilating all that's made 

To a green thought in a green shade. 

Here at the fountain's sliding foot, 

Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root, 

Casting the body's vest aside, 

My soul into the boughs does glide; 

There, like a bird, it sits and sings, 

Then wets and claps its silver wings, 

And, till prepared for longer flight, 

Waves in its plumes the various light. 

How well the skilful gardener drew, 

Of flowers and herbs, this dial new, 

Where, from above, the milder sun 

Does through a fragi'ant zodiac run; 

And, as it works, the industrious bee 

Computes its time as well as we. 

How could such sweet and Avholesome hours 

Be reckon'd, but with herbs and flowers? * 

The artificial fountains of the metropolis are, in like 
manner, fast vanishing. Most of them are dried up, or 
bricked over. Yet, where one is left, as in that little 

* From a copy of verses entitled The Garden. 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNEE TEMPLE. 151 

green nook behind the South-Sea House, what a fresh- 
ness it gives to the dreary pile 1 Four little winged 
marble boys used to play their virgin fancies, spouting 
out ever fresh streams from their innocent-wanton 
lips in the square of Lin coin 's-inn, when I was no 
bigger than they were figured. They are gone, and 
tlie spring choked up. The fashion, they tell me is 
gone by, and these things are esteemed childish. 
Why not then gratify children, by letting them stand ? 
Lawyers, I suppose, were children once. They are 
awakening images to them at least. Why must every- 
thing smack of man and mannish ? Is the world all 
grown up ? Is childhood dead ? Or is there not in the 
bosoms of the wisest and the best some of the child's 
heart left, to respond to its earliest enchantments ? 
The figures were grotesque. Are the stiff-wigged liv- 
ing figures, that still flitter and chatter about that area, 
less Gothic in appearance? or is the splutter of their 
hot rhetoric one half so refreshing and innocent as the 
little cool playful streams those exploded cherubs ut- 
tered ? 

They have lately gothicized the entrance to the 
Inner Temple-hall, and the library front ; to assimilate 
them, I suppose, to the body of the hall, which they 
do not at all resemble. What is become of the winged 
horse that stood over the former ? a stately arms I and 
who has removed those frescoes of the Virtues, which 
Italianized the end of the Paper Buildings ? — my first 
hint of allegory ! They must account to me for these 
things, which I miss so greatly. 

The terrace is, indeed, left, which we used to call 
the parade ; but the traces are passed away of the 
footsteps which made its pavement awftil! It is be- 



152 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 

come common and profane. The old benchers had it 
almost sacred to themselves, in the forepart of the day 
at least. They might not be sided or jostled. Their 
au" and dress asserted the parade. You left wide spaces 
betwixt you, when you passed them. We walk on 
even terms with their successors. The roguish eye of 

J 11, ever ready to be delivered of a jest, almost 

invites a stranger to vie a repartee with it. But what 
insolent familiar durst have mated Thomas Coventry ? 
— whose person was a quadrate, his step massy and 
elephantine, his face square as the lion's, his gait per- 
emptory and path-keeping, indivertible from his way as 
a moving column, the scarecrow of his inferiors, the 
browbeater of equals and superiors, who made a soli- 
tude of children wherever he came, for they fled his 
insufferable presence, as they would have shunned an 
Elisha bear. His growl was as thulider in their ears, 
whether he spake to them in mirth or in rebuke, his 
invitatory notes being, indeed, of all, the most repul- 
sive and horrid. Clouds of snuflF, aggravating the 
natural terrors of his speech, broke from each majestic 
nostril, darkening the air. He took it not by pinches, 
but a palmfal at once, diving for it under the mighty 
flaps of his old-fashioned waistcoat pocket ; his waist- 
coat red and angry, his coat dark rappee, tinctured by 
dye original, and by adjuncts, with buttons of obsolete 
gold. And so he paced the terrace. 

By his side a milder form was sometimes to be seen ; 
the pensive gentility of Samuel Salt. They were co- 
evals, and had nothing but that and their benchership 
in common. In politics Salt was a whig, and Coventry 
a stanch tory. Many a sarcastic growl did the latter 
cast out — for Coventry had a rough spinous humor — 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 155 

at the political confederates of Ms associate, wliich 
rebounded from the gentle bosom of the latter like 
cannon-balls from wool. You could not ruffle Samuel 
Salt. 

S. had the reputation of being a very clever man, 
and of excellent discernment in the chamber practice 
of the law. I suspect his knowledge did not amount 
to much. When a case of difficult disposition of 
money, testamentary or otherwise, came before him, 
he ordinarily handed it over with a few instructions to 
his man Lovel, who was a quick little fellow, and 
would despatch it out of hand by the light of natural 
understanding, of which he had an uncommon share. 
It was incredible what repute for talents S. enjoyed 
by the mere trick of gravity. He was a shy man ; a 
child might pose him in a minute, — indolent and pro- 
crastinating to the last degree. Yet men would give 
him credit for vast application, in spite of himself. He 
was not to be trusted with himself with impunity. He 
never di'essed for a dinner party but he forgot his 
sword — they wore swords then — or some other ne- 
cessary part of his equipage. Lovel had his eye upon 
him on all these occasions, and ordinarily gave him his 
cue. If there was anything which he could speak un- 
seasonably, he was sure to do it. He was to dine at a 
relative's of the unfortunate Miss Blandy on the day of 
her execution ; — and L. who had a wary foresight of 
his probable hallucinations, before he set out, schooled 
him with great anxiety not in any possible manner to 
allude to her story that day. S. promised faithftilly to 
observe the injunction. He had not been seated in the 
parlor, where the company was expecting the dinner 
summons, four minutes, when, a pause in the conver- 



154 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 

satlon ensuing, he got up, looked out of window, and 
pulling down his ruffles — an ordinary motion with 
him — observed, "it was a gloomy day," and added, 
" Miss Blandy must be hanged by this time, I suppose." 
Instances of this sort were perpetual. Yet S. was 
thought by some of the greatest men of his time a fit 
person to be consulted, not alone in matters pertaining 
to the law, but in the ordinary niceties and embarrass- 
ments of conduct — from force of manner entirely. He 
never laughed. He had the same good fortune among 
the female world, — was a known toast with the ladies, 
and one or two are said to have died for love of 
him — I suppose, because he never trifled or talked 
gallantry with them, or paid them, indeed, hardly com- 
mon attentions. He had a fine face and person, but 
wanted, methought, the spirit that should have shown 
them off with advantage to the women. His eye 

lacked lustre. Not so, thought Susan P ; who, at 

the advanced age of sixty, was seen, in the cold even- 
ing time, unaccompanied, wetting the pavement of 

B d Row, with tears that fell in drops which might 

be heard, because her friend had died that day — he, 
whom she had pursued with a hopeless passion for the 
last forty years, — a passion, which years could not ex- 
tinguish or abate ; nor the long-resolved, yet gently- 
enforced, puttings off of unrelenting bachelorhood dis- 
suade from its cherished purpose. Mild Susan P , 

thou hast now thy friend in heaven ! 

Thomas Coventry was a cadet of the noble family 
of that name. He passed his youth in contracted cir- 
cumstances, which gave him early those parsimonious 
habits which in after-life never forsook him ; so that, 
with one windfall or another, about the time I knew 



THE OLD BENCHERS ,0F THE INNER TEMPLE. 155 

him he was master of four or five hundred thousand 
pounds ; nor did he look, or walk, worth a moidore 
less. He lived in a gloomy house opposite the pump 
in Serjeant's-inn, Fleet Street. J., the counsel, is doincf 
self-imposed penance in it, for what reason I divine not, 
at this day. C. had an agreeable seat at North Cray, 
where he seldom spent above a day or two at a time in 
the summer ; but preferred, during the hot months, 
standing at his window in this damp, close, well-like 
mansion, to watch, as he said, " the maids drawing 
water all day long." I suspect he had his wi thin-door 
reasons for the preference. Hie currus et arma fuere. 
He might think his treasures more safe. His house 
had the aspect of a strong-box. C. was a close hunks 
— a hoarder rather than a miser — or, if a miser, none 
of the mad Elwes breed, who have brought discredit 
upon a character, which cannot exist without certain 
admirable points of steadiness and unity of purpose. 
One may hate a true miser, but cannot, I suspect, so 
easily despise him. By taking care of the pence, he is 
often enabled to part with the pounds, upon a scale that 
leaves us careless generous fellows halting at an im- 
measurable distance behind. C. gave away 30,000?. 
at once in his lifetime to a blind charity. His house- 
keeping was severely looked after, but he kept the 
table of a gentleman. He would know who came in 
and who went out of his house, but his kitchen chim- 
ney was never suffered to freeze. 

Salt was his opposite in this, as in all — never knew 
what he was worth in the world; and having but a 
competency for his rank, which his indolent habits 
were little calculated to improve, might have suffered 
severely if he had not had honest people about him. 



156 THE OLD BENCHERS OF' THE INNER TEMPLE. 

Lovel took care of everything. He was at once his 
clerk, his good servant, his dresser, his friend, his 
'' flapper," his guide, stop-watch, auditor, treasurer. 
He did nothing without consulting Lovel, or failed in 
anything without expecting and fearing his admonish- 
ing. He put himself almost too much in his hands, 
had they not been the purest in the world. He re- 
signed his title almost to respect as a master, if L. 
could ever have foro;otten for a moment that he was 
a servant. 

I knew this Lovel. He was a man of an incorrigible 
and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and " would 
strike." Li the cause of the oppressed he never con- 
sidered inequalities, or calculated the number of his 
opponents. He once wrested a sword out of the hand 
of a man of quality that had drawn upon him ; and 
pommelled him severely with the hilt of it. The 
swordsman had offered insult to a female — an occa- 
sion upon which no odds against him could have pre- 
vented the interference of Lovel. He would stand 
next day bareheaded to the same person, modestly to 
excuse his interference — for L. never forofot rank, 
where something better was not concerned. L. was 
the liveliest little fellow breathing, had a face as gay as 
Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to resemble (I 
have a portrait of him which confirms it), possessed a 
fine turn for humorous poetry — next to Swift and 
Prior — moulded heads in clay or plaster of Paris to 
admiration, by the dint of natural genius merely ; 
turned cribbage boards, and such small cabinet toys, 
to perfection ; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with 
equal facility ; made punch better than any man of his 
degree in England ; had the merriest quips and con- 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 157 

ceits ; and was altogether as brimful of rogueries and 
inventions as you could desire. He was a brother of 
the angle, moreover, and just such a free, hearty, 
honest companion as Mr. Izaak Walton would have 
chosen to go a-fishing with. I saw him in his old age 
and the decay of his faculties, palsy-smitten, in the last 
sad stao-e of human weakness — "a remnant most 
forlorn of what he was," — yet even then his eye 
would light up upon the mention of his favorite Gar- 
rick. He was greatest, he would say, in Bayes — 
" was upon the stage nearly throughout the whole 
performance, and as busy as a bee." At intervals, too, 
he would speak of his former life, and how he came up 
a little boy from Lincoln to go to service, and how his 
mother cried at parting with him, and how he returned, 
after some few years' absence, in his smart new livery, 
to see her, and she blessed herself at the change, and 
could hardly be brought to believe that it was " her 
own bairn." And then, the excitement subsiding, he 
would weep, till I have wished that sad second child- 
hood might have a mother still to lay its head upon her 
lap. But the common mother of us all in no long time 
after received him gently into hers. 

With Coventry, and with Salt, in their walks upon 
the terrace, most commonly Peter Pierson would join 
to make up a third. They did not walk linked arm in 
arm in those days — "as now our stout triumvirs 
sweep the streets," — but generally with both hands 
folded behind them for state, or with one at least be- 
hind, the other carrying a cane. P. was a benevolent, 
but not a prepossessing man. He had that in his face 
which you could not term unhappiness ; it rather im- 
plied an incapacity of being happy. His cheeks were 



158 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 

colorless even to whiteness. His look was uninviting, 
resembling (but without Ms sourness) that of our great 
philanthropist. I know that he did good acts, but I 
could never make out what he was. Contemporary 
with these, but subordinate, was Daines Barrington — 
another oddity — he walked burly and square — in 
imitation, I think, of Coventry — howbeit he attained 
not to the dignity of his prototype. Nevertheless, he 
did pretty well, upon the strength of being a tolerable 
antiquarian, and having a brother a bishop. When the 
account of his year's treasurership came to be audited, 
the following singular charge was unanimously dis- 
allowed by the bench : " Item, disbursed Mr. Allen, 
the gardener, twenty shillings, for stuff to poison the 
sparrows, by my orders." Next to him was old Barton 

— a jolly negation, who took upon him the ordering of 
the bills of fare for the parliament chamber, where the 
benchers dine — answering to the combination rooms 
at College — much to the easement of his less epicurean 
brethren. I know nothing more of him. Then Read, 
and Twopeny — Read, good-humored and personable 

— Twopeny, good-humored, but thin, and felicitous in 
jests upon his own figure. If T. was thin, Wharry 
was attenuated and fleeting. Many must remember 
him (for he was rather of later date) and his singular 
gait, which was performed by three steps and a jump 
regularly succeeding. The steps were little eflPorts, 
like that of a child beginning to walk ; the jump com- 
paratively vigorous, as a foot to an inch. Where he 
learned this figure, or what occasioned it, I could never 
discover. It was neither graceful in itself, nor seemed 
to answer the purpose any better than common walk- 
ing. The extreme tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 159 

him upon it. It was a trial of poising. Twopeny 
would often rally him upon his leanness, and hail him 
as brother Lusty ; but W. had no relish of a joke. His 
features were spiteful . I have heard that he would 
pinch his cat's ears extremely, when anything had 
offended him. Jackson — the omniscient Jackson he 
was called — was of this period. He had the reputa- 
tion of possessing more multifarious knowledge than 
any man of his time. He was the Friar Bacon of the* 
less literate portion of the Temple. I remember a 
pleasant passage, of the cook applying to him, with 
much formality of apology, for instructions how to write 
down edge bone of beef in his bill of commons. He 
was supposed to know, if any man in the world did. 
He decided the orthography to be — as I have given it 
— fortifying his authority with such anatomical reasons 
as dismissed the manciple (for the time) learned and 
happy. Some do spell it yet, perversely, aitch bone, 
from a fanciful resemblance between its shape and that 
of the aspirate so denominated. I had almost forgotten 
Mingay with the iron hand — but he was somewhat 
later. He had lost his right hand by some accident, 
and supplied it with a grappling-hook, which he 
wielded with a tolerable adroitness. I detected the 
substitute, before I was old enough to reason whether 
it were artificial or not. I remember the astonishment 
it raised in me. He was a blustering, loud-talking 
person ; and I reconciled the phenomenon to my ideas 
as an emblem of power — somewhat like the horns in 
the forehead of Michael Angelo's Moses. Baron Ma- 
seres, who walks (or did till very lately) in the cos- 
tume of the reign of George the Second, closes my 
imperfect recollections of the old benchers of the 
Inner Temple. 



160 THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 

Fantastic forms, whither are ye fled ? Or, if the 
like of you exist, why exist they no more for me ? Ye 
inexplicable, half-understood appearances, why comes 
in reason to tear away the preternatural mist, bright 
or gloomy, that enshrouded you? Why make ye so 
sorry a figure in my relation, who made up to me, — to 
my childish eyes — the mythology of the Temple ? In 
tliose days I saw Gods, as " old men covered with a 
•mantle," walking upon the earth. Let the dreams of 
classic idolatry perish, — extinct be the fairies and fairy 
trumpery of legendary fabling, in the heart of child- 
hood, there will, forever, spring up a well of innocent 
or wholesome superstition, — the seeds of exaggeration 
will be busy there, and vital — from every-day forms 
educing the unknown and the uncommon. In that 
little Goshen there will be light, when the grown 
world flounders about in the darkness of sense and 
materiality. While childhood, and while dreams, 
reducing childhood, shall be left, imagination shall 
not have spread her holy wings totally to fly the 
earth. 

P. S. — I have done injustice to the soft shade of 
Samuel Salt. See what it is to trust to imperfect 
memory, and the erring notices of childhood ! Yet I 
protest I always thought that he had been a bachelor ! 
This gentleman, R. N. informs me, married young, and 
losing his lady in childbed, within the first year of their 
union, fell into a deep melancholy, from the effects of 
which, probably, he never thoroughly recovered. In 
what a new light does this place his rejection (O call it 
by a gentler name !) of mild Susan P , unravel- 
ling into beauty certain peculiarities of this very shy 



THE OLD BENCHERS OF THE INNER TEMPLE. 161 

and retiring character I Henceforth let no one receive 
the narratives of Elia for true records 1 They are, in 
truth, but shadows of fact — verisimilitudes, not veri- 
ties — or sitting but upon the remote edges and out- 
skirts of history. He is no such honest chronicler as 
R. N., and would have done better perhaps to have 
consulted that gentleman, before he sent these incondite 
reminiscences to press. But the worthy sub-treasurer 
— who respects his old and his new masters — would 
but have been puzzled at the indecorous liberties of 
Elia. The good man wots not, peradventure, of the 
license which Magazines have arrived at in this plain- 
speaking age, or hardly dreams of their existence be- 
yond the G-entleman' s — his furthest monthly excur- 
sions in this nature having been long confined to the 
holy ground of honest UrharCs obituary. May it be 
long before his own name shall help to swell those 
columns of unenvied flattery ! — Meantime, O ye New 
Benchers of the Inner Temple, cherish him kindly, for 
he Is himself the kindliest of human creatures. Should 
Infirmities overtake him — he is yet in green and vig- 
orous senility — make allowances for them, remember- 
ing that "ye yourselves are old." So may the Winged 
Horse, your ancient badge and cognizance, still flourish ! 
so may future Hookers and Seldens illustrate your 
church and chambers ! so may the sparrows. In default 
of more melodious choristers, unpoisoned, hop about 
your walks ! so may the fresh-colored and cleanly nur- 
sery maid, who, by leave, airs her playful charge in 
your stately gardens, drop her prettiest blushing curtsy 
as ye pass, reductive of juvenescent emotion I so may 
the younkers of this generation eye you, pacing your 
stately terrace, with the same superstitious veneration, 

VOL. III. 11 



162 GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 

with which the child Elia gazed on the Old Worthies 
that solemnized the parade before ye ! 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 

The custom of saying grace at meals had, probably, 
its origin in the early times of the world, and the hun- 
ter state of man, when dinners were precarious things, 
and a full meal was something more than a common 
blessing ! when a bellyful was a windfall, and looked 
like a special providence. In the shouts and triumphal 
songs with which, after a season of sharp abstinence, a 
lucky booty of deer's or goat's flesh would naturally be 
ushered home, existed, perhaps, the germ of the mod- 
ern grace. It is not otherwise easy to be understood, 
why the blessing of food — the act of eating — should 
^have had a particular expression of thanksgiving an- 
nexed to it, distinct from that implied and silent grati- 
tude with which we are expected to enter upon the 
enjoyment of the many other various gifts and good 
things of existence. 

I own that I am disposed to say grace upon twenty 
other occasions in the course of the day besides my 
dinner. I want a form for setting out upon a pleasant 
walk, for a moonlight ramble, for a friendly meeting, 
or a solved problem. Why have we none for books, 
those spiritual repasts — a grace before Milton — a 
grace before Shakspeare — a devotional exercise proper 
to be said before reading the Fairy Queen ? — but the 
received ritual having prescribed these forms to the 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 163 

solitary ceremony of manducation, I shall confine my 
observations to tlie experience which I have had of the 
grace, properly so called ; commending my new scheme 
for extension to a niche in the grand philosophical, 
poetical, and perchance in part heretical, liturgy, now 
compiling by my friend Homo Humanus, for the use 
of a certain snug congregation of Utopian Rabelsesian 
Christians, no matter where assembled. 

The form, then, of the benediction before eating has 
its beauty at a poor man's table, or at the simple and 
unpro vocative repast of children. It is here that the 
grace becomes exceedingly graceful. The indigent 
man, who hardly knows whether he shall have a meal 
the next day or not, sits down to his fare with a pres- 
ent sense of the blessing, which can be but feebly 
acted by the rich, into whose minds the conception of 
wanting a dinner could never, but by some extreme 
theory, have entered. The proper end of food — the 
animal sustenance — is barely contemplated by them. 
The poor man's bread is his daily bread, literally his 
bread for the day. Their courses are perennial. 

Again the plainest diet seems the fittest to be pre- 
ceded by the grace. That which is least stimulative 
to appetite, leaves the mind most fr^ee for foreign con- 
siderations. A man may feel thankful, heartily thank- 
ftil, over a dish of plain mutton with turnips, and have 
leisure to reflect upon the ordinance and institution of 
eating ; when he shall confess a perturbation of mind, 
inconsistent with the purposes of the grace, at the pres- 
ence of venison or turtle. When I have sat (a varus 
Jiospes) at rich men's tables, with the savory soup and 
messes steaming up the nostrils, and moistening the lips 
of the guests with desire and a distracted choice, I have 



164 GEACE BEFORE MEAT. 

felt the introduction of that ceremony to be unseason- 
able. With the ravenous orgasm upon you, it seems 
impertinent to interpose a religious sentiment. It is 
a confusion of purpose to mutter out praises from a 
mouth that waters. The heats of epicurism put out 
the gentle flame of devotion. The incense which rises 
round is pagan, and the bellygod intercepts it for his 
own. The very excess of the provision beyond the 
needs, takes away all sense of proportion between the 
end and means. The giver is veiled by his gifts. 
You are startled at the injustice of returning thanks 
— for what? — for having too much, while so many 
starve. It is to praise the Gods amiss. 

I have observed this awkwardness felt, scarce con- 
sciously perhaps, by the good man who says the grace. 
I have seen it in clergymen and others, — a sort of 
shame, — a sense of the co-presence of circumstances 
which unhallow the blessing. After a devotional tone 
put on for a few seconds, how rapidly the speaker will 
fall into his common voice ! helping himself or his 
neighbor, as if to get rid of some uneasy sensation of 
hypocrisy. Not that the good man was a hypocrite, 
or was not most conscientious in the discharge of the 
duty; but he felt in his inmost mind the incompati- 
bility of the scene and the viands before him with the 
exercise of a calm and rational gratitude. 

I hear somebody exclaim, — '■ Would you have Chris- 
tians sit down at table, like hogs to their troughs, with- 
out remembering the Giver ? — no, — I would have 
them sit down as Christians, remembering the Giver, 
and less like hogs. Or if their appetites must run riot, 
and they must pamper themselves with delicacies for 
which east and west are ransacked, I would have them 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 165 

postpone their benediction to a fitter season, when ap- 
petite is laid ; when the still small voice can be heard, 
and the reason of the grace returns — with temperate 
diet and restricted dishes. Gluttony and surfeiting are 
no proper occasions for thanksgiving. When Jeshurun 
waxed fat, we read that he kicked. Virgil knew the 
harpy-nature better, when he put into the mouth of 
Celseno anything but a blessing. We may be grate- 
fully sensible of the dehciousness of some kinds of food 
beyond others, though that is a meaner and inferior 
gratitude ; but the proper object of the grace is suste- 
nance, not relishes; daily bread, not dehcacies ; the 
means of life, and not the means of pampering the car- 
cass. With what frame or composure, I wonder, can 
a city chaplain pronounce his benediction at some great 
Hall-feast, when he knows that his last concluding 
pious word — and that, in all probability, the sacred 
name which he preaches — is but the signal for so 
many impatient harpies to commence their foul orgies, 
with as little sense of true thankfulness (which is tem- 
perance) as those Virgilian fowl! It is well if the 
good man himself does not feel his devotions a Httle 
clouded, those foggy sensuous steams mingling with 
and polluting the pure altar sacrifice. 

The severest satire upon full tables and surfeits is the 
banquet which Satan, in the Paradise Regained, pro- 
vides for a temptation in the wilderness : 

A table richly spread in regal mode 
With dishes piled, and meats of noblest sort 
And savor; beasts of chase, or fowl of game, 
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, 
Gris- amber- steamed; ail fish from sea or shore, 
Freshet or purling brook, for which was drained 
Pontus, and Lucrme bay, and Afric coast. 



166 GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 

The Tempter, I warrant you, thought these cates 
would go down without the recommendatory preface of 
a benediction. Thej are like to be short graces where 
the devil plays the host. I am afraid the poet wants 
his usual decorum in this place. Was he thinking of 
the old Roman luxury, or of a gaudy day at Cam- 
bridge ? This was a temptation fitter for a Heliogaba- 
lus. The whole banquet is too civic and culinary, and 
the accompaniments altogether a profanation of that 
deep, abstracted holy scene. The mighty artillery of 
sauces, which the cook-fiend conjures up, is out of pro- 
portion to the simple wants and plain hunger of the 
guest. He that disturbed him in his dreams, from his 
dreams might have been taught better. To the tem- 
perate fantasies of the famished Son of God, what sort 
of feasts presented themselves ? — He dreamed indeed, 

As appetite is wont to dream, 
Of meats and drinks, nature's refreshment sweet. 

But what meats ? — 

Him thought, he by the brook of Cherith stood, 
And saw the ravens with their horny beaks 
Food to Elijah bringing even and morn ; 
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they 

brought : 
He saw the prophet also how he fled 
Into the desert, and how there he slept 
Under a juniper; then how awaked 
He found his supper on the coals prepared. 
And by the angel was bid rise and eat. 
And ate the second time after repose. 
The strength whereof sufficed him forty days ; 
Sometimes, that with Elijah he partook. 
Or as a guest with Daniel at his pulse. 

Nothing in Milton is finelier fancied than these temper- 
ate dreams of the divine Hungerer. To which of these 



GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 167 

two visionary banquets, think you, would the introduc- 
tion of what is called the grace have been the most 
fitting and pertinent? 

Theoretically I am no enemy to graces ; but prac- 
tically I own that (before meat especially) they seem 
to involve something awkward and unseasonable. Our 
appetites, of one or another kind, are excellent spurs 
to our reason, which might otherwise but feebly set 
about the great ends of preserving and continuing the 
species. They are fit blessings to be contemplated at 
a distance with a becoming gratitude ; but the moment 
of appetite (the judicious reader will apprehend me) 
is, perhaps, the least fit season for that exercise. The 
Quakers, who go about their business of every descrip- 
tion with more calmness than we, have more title to 
the use of these benedictory prefaces. I have always 
admired their silent grace, and the more because I have 
observed their applications to the meat and drink fol- 
lowing to be less passionate and sensual than ours. 
They are neither gluttons nor wine-bibbers as a people. 
They eat, as a horse bolts his chopped hay, with indif- 
ference, calmness, and cleanly circumstances. They 
neither grease nor slop themselves. When I see a 
citizen in his bib and tucker, I cannot imagine it a 
surplice. 

I am no Quaker at my food. I confess I am not 
indifferent to the kinds of it. Those unctuous morsels 
of deer's flesh were not made to be received with dis- 
passionate services. I hate a man who swallows it, 
affecting not to know what he is eating. I suspect 
his taste in higher matters. I shrink instinctively from 
one who professes to like minced veal. There is a 
physiognomical character in the tastes for food. C ■ 



168 GRACE BEFORE MEAT. 

holds that a man cannot have a pure mind who refuses 
apple-dumphngs. I am not certain but he is right. 
With the decay of my first innocence, I confess a less 
and less relish daily for those innocuous cates. The 
whole vegetable tribe have lost their gust with me. 
Only I stick to asparagus, which still seems to inspire 
gentle thoughts. I am impatient and querulous under 
culinary disappointments, as to come home at the din- 
ner hour, for instance, expecting some savory mess, 
and to find one quite tasteless and sapidless. Butter ill 
melted — that commonest of kitchen failures — puts me 
beside my tenor. The author of The Rambler used to 
make inarticulate animal noises over a favorite food. 
Was this the music quite proper to be preceded by the 
grace ? or would the pious man have done better to 
postpone his devotions to a season when the blessing 
might be contemplated with less perturbation ? I 
quarrel with no man's tastes, nor would set my thin 
face against those excellent things, in their way, jollity 
and feasting. But as these exercises, however laudable, 
have little in them of grace or gracefulness, a man 
should be sure, before he ventures so to grace them, 
that while he is pretending his devotions otherwhere, 
he is not secretly kissing his hand to some great fish — 
his Dagon — with a special consecration of no ark but 
the fat tureen before him. Graces are the sweet pre- 
luding strains to the banquets of angels and children ; 
to the roots and severer repasts of the Chartreuse ; to 
the slender, but not slenderly acknowledged, refection 
of the poor and humble man ; but at the heaped-up 
boards of the pampered and the luxurious they become 
of dissonant mood, less timed and tuned to the occa- 
sion, methinks, than the noise of those better befitting 



GKACE BEFORE MEAT. 169 

organs would be whicli children hear tales of, at Hog's 
Norton. We sit too long at our meals, or are too 
curious in the study of them, or too disordered in our 
apphcation to them, or engross too great a portion of 
those good things (which should be common) to our 
share, to be able with any grace to say grace. To be 
thankful for what we grasp exceeding our proportion, 
is to add hypocrisy to injustice. A lurking sense of 
this truth is what makes the performance of this duty 
so cold and spiritless a service at most tables. In 
houses where the grace is as indispensable as the nap- 
kin, who has not seen that never-settled question arise, 
as to who shall say it ? while the good man of the house 
and the visitor clergyman, or some other guest, belike 
of next authority, from years or gravity, shall be 
bandying about the office between them as a matter 
of compliment, each of them not unwilling to shift the 
awkward burden of an equivocal duty from his own 
shoulders ? 

I once drank tea in company with two Methodist 
divines of different persuasions, whom it was my for- 
tune to introduce to each other for the first time that 
evening. Before the first cup was handed round, one 
of these reverend gentlemen put it to the other, with 
all due solemnity, whether he chose to say anything. 
It seems it is the custom with some sectaries to put up 
a short prayer before this meal also. His reverend 
brother did not at first quite apprehend him, but upon 
an explanation, with little less importance he made 
answer that it was not a custom known in his church ; 
in which courteous evasion the other acquiescing for 
good manners' sake, or in compliance with a weak 
brother, the supplementary or tea-grace was waived 



170 GKACE BEFORE MEAT. 

altogether. With what spirit might not Lucian have 
painted two priests of his rehgion playing into each 
other's hands the compliment of performing or omitting 
a sacrifice, — the hungry God meantime, doubtful of 
his incense, with expectant nostrils hovering over the 
two flamens, and (as between two stools) going away 
in the end without his supper. 

A short form upon these occasions is felt to want 
reverence ; a long one, I am afraid, cannot escape the 
charge of impertinence. I do not quite approve of 
the epigrammatic conciseness with which that equiv- 
ocal wag (but my pleasant school-fellow) C. Y. L., 
when importmied for a grace, used to inquire, first 
slyly leering down the table, " Is there no clergyman 
here," — significantly adding, "Thank G — ." Nor 
do I think our old form at school quite pertinent, 
where we were used to preface our bald bread-and- 
cheese-suppers with a preamble, connecting with that 
humble blessing a recognition of benefits the most 
awful and overwhelming to the imagination which 
religion has to offer. JSfon tunc illis erat locus. I 
remember we were put to it to reconcile the phrase 
" good creatures," upon which the blessing rested, 
with the fare set before us, wilfully understanding that 
expression in a low and animal sense, — till some one 
recalled a legend, which told how, in the golden days 
of Christ's, the young Hospitallers were wont to have 
smoking joints of roast meat upon their nightly boards, 
till some pious benefactor, commiserating the decencies, 
rather than the palates, of the children, commuted our 
flesh for garments, and gave us — horreseo ref evens — 
trousers instead of mutton. 



DKEAM-CHILDEEN; A REVEKY. 171 



DREAM-CHILDREN ; A REVERT. 

^ /"/ Children love to listen to stories about their elders, 
when they were children ; to stretch their imagination 
to the conception of a traditionary great-uncle, or 
gran dame, whom they never saw. It was in this spirit 
that mj little ones crept about me the other evening to 
hear about their great-grandmother Field, who lived in 
a great house in Norfolk (a hundred times bigger than 
that in which they and papa lived) which had been the 
scene — so at least it was generally believed in that 
part of the country — of the tragic incidents which 
they had lately become familiar with from the ballad 
of the Children in the Wood. Certain it is that the 
whole story of the children and their cruel uncle was 
to be seen fairly carved out in wood upon the chimney- 
piece of the great hall, the whole story down to the 
Robin Redbreasts ; till a foolish rich person pulled it 
down to set up a marble one of modern invention in 
its stead, with no story upon it. Here Alice put out 
one of her dear mother's looks, too tender to be called 
upbraiding. Then I went on to say, how religious and 
how good their great-grandmother Field was, how be- 
loved and respected by everybody, though she was not 
indeed the mistress of this great house, but had only 
the charge of it (and yet in some respects she might 
be said to be the mistress of it too) committed to her 
by the owner, who preferred living in a newer and 
more fashionable mansion which he had purchase^ 
somewhere in the adjoining county ; but still she liveii 
in it in a manner as if it had been her own, and kept 

\ 



172 DREAM-CHILDREN; A RE VERY. 

up the dignity of the great house in a sort while she 
lived, which afterwards came to decay, and was nearly 
pulled down, and all its old ornaments stripped and 
carried away to the owner's other house, where they 
were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one 
were to carry away the old tombs they had seen lately 
at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.'s tawdry 
gilt drawing-room. Here John smiled, as much as to 
say, " that would be foolish indeed." And then I told 
how, when she came to die, her funeral was attended 
by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the gentry 
too, of the neighborhood for many miles round, to show 
their respect for her memory, because she had been 
such a good and religious woman ; so good indeed that 
she knew all the Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great 
part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice 
spread her hands. Then I told what a tall, upright, 
graceful person their great-grandmother Field once 
was ; and how in her youth she was esteemed the 
best dancer, — here Alice's little right foot played an 
involuntary movement, till, upon my looking grave, it 
desisted, — the best dancer, I was saying, in the county, 
till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed 
her down with pain ; but it could never bend her good 
spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, 
because she was so good and religious. Then I told 
how she was used to sleep by herself m a lone chamber 
of the great lone house ; and how she believed that an 
apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight 
gliding up and down the' great staircase near where 
she slept, but she said " those innocents would do her 
no harm ; " and how frightened I used to be, though 
in those days I had my maid to sleep with me, because 



DREAM-CHILDREN; A RE VERY. 178 

I was never half so good or religious as she, — and jet 
I never saw the infants. Here John expanded all his 
eyebrows and tried to look courageous. Then I told 
how good she was to all her grandchildren, having us 
to the great house in the holidays, where I in particular 
used to spend many hours by myself, in gazing upon 
the old busts of the twelve Caesars, that had been Em- 
perors of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem 
to live again, or I to be turned into marble with them ; 
how I never could be tired with roaming about that 
huge mansion, with its vast empty rooms, with their 
worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved 
oaken pannels, with the gilding almost rubbed, out, — 
sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which 
I had almost to myself, unless when now and then a 
solitary gardening man would cross me, — and how the 
nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without 
my ever offering to pluck them, because they were 
forbidden fruit, unless now and then, — and because I 
had more pleasure in strolling about among the old 
melancholy-looking yew-trees, or the firs, and picking 
up the red berries, and the fir-apples, which were good 
for nothing but to look at, — or in lying about upon the 
fresh grass with all the fine garden smells around me, — 
or basking in the orangery, till I could almost fancy 
myself ripening too along with the oranges and the 
limes in that grateful warmth, — or W/ watching the 
dace that darted to and fro in the Mh-pond,' at the 
bottom of the garden, with here and there a great 
sulky pike hanging midway down the water iri\sjlent 
state, as if it mocked at their impertinent friskings ; — 
I had more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than 
in all the sweet flavors of peaches, nectarines, oranges, 



174 DEEAM-CHILDREN; A EEVERY. 

and such-like common baits of children. Here John 
slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, 
which, not unobserved by Alice, he had meditated 
dividing with her, and both seemed willing to relin- 
quish them for the present as irrelevant. Then, in 
somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how, though 
their great-grandmother Field loved all her grand- 
children, yet in an especial manner she might be said 

to love their uncle, John L , because he was so 

handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest 
of us ; and, instead of moping about in solitary corners, 
like some of us, he would mount the most mettlesome 
horse he could get, when but an imp no bigger than 
themselves, and make it carry him half over the county 
in a morning, and join the hunters when there were 
any out, — and yet he loved the old great house and 
gardens too, but had too much spirit to be always 
pent up within their boundaries, — and how their uncle 
grew up to man's estate as brave as he was handsome, 
to the admiration of everybody, but of their great- 
grandmother Field most especially ; and how he used 
to carry me upon his back when I was a lame-footed 
boy — for he was a good bit older than me — many a 
mile when I could not walk for pain ; — and how in 
after-life he became lame-footed too, and I did not 
always (I fear) make allowances enough for him when 
he was impatient and in pain, nor remember suffi- 
ciently how considerate he had been to me when I was 
lame-footed ; and how when he died, though he had 
not been dead an hour, it seemed as if he had died a 
great while ago, such a distance there is betwixt life 
and death ; and how I bore his death, as I thought 
pretty well at first, but afterwards it haunted and 



DREAM-CHILDREN; A REVERY. 175 

haunted me ; and though I did not cry or take it to 
heart as some do, and as I think he would have done 
if I had died, yet I missed him all day long, and knew 
not till then how much I had loved him. I missed his 
kindness, and I missed his crossness, and wished him 
to be alive again, to be quarrelling with him (for we 
quarrelled sometimes), rather than not have him again, 
and was as uneasy without him, as he their poor uncle 
must have been when the doctor took off his limb. 
Here the children fell a-crying, and asked if their little 
mourning which they had on was not for Uncle John, 
and they looked up, and prayed me not to go on about 
their uncle, but to tell them some stories about their 
pretty dead mother. Then I told how, for seven long 
years, in hope sometimes, sometimes in despair, yet 
persisting ever, I courted the fair Alice W — n ; and, 
as much as children could understand, I explained to 
them what coyness, and difficulty, and denial meant in 
maidens, — when suddenly, turning to Alice, the soul 
of the first Alice looked out at her eyes with such a 
reality of representment, that I became in doubt which 
of them stood there before me, or whose that bright 
hair was ; and while I stood gazing, both the children 
gradually grew fainter to my view, receding, and still 
receding, till nothing at last but two mournful features 
were seen in the uttermost distance, which, without 
speech, strangely impressed upon me the effects of 
speech : " We are not of Alice, nor of thee, nor are we 
children at all. The children of Alice call Bartrum 
father. We are nothing ; less than nothing, and 
dreams. We are only what might have been, and 
must wait upon the tedious shores of Lethe millions of 
ages before we have existence, and a name; " and 



176 DISTANT COEEESPONDENTS. 

immediately awaking, I found myself quietly seated in 
my bachelor armchair, where I had fallen asleep, with 
the faithful Bridget unchanged by my side, — but John 
L. (or James Elia) was gone forever. 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 

IN A LETTER TO B. ¥., ESQ., AT SYDNEY, NEW SOUTH WALES. 

My dear F. — When I think how welcome the 
sight of a letter from the world where you were born 
must be to you in that strange one to which you have 
been transplanted, I feel some compunctious visitings 
at my long silence. But, indeed, it is no easy effort to 
set about a correspondence at our distance. The weary 
world of waters between us oppresses the imagination. 
It is difficult to conceive how a scrawl of mine should 
ever stretch across it. It is a sort of presumption to 
expect that one's thoughts should live so far. It is 
like writing for posterity ; and reminds me of one of 
Mrs. Howe's superscriptions, " Alcander to Strephon in 
the Shades." Cowley's Post- Angel is no more than 
would be expedient in such an intercourse. One drops 
a packet at Lombard Street, and in twenty-four hours 
a friend in Cumberland gets it as fresh as if it came in 
ice. It is only like whispering through a long trumpet. 
But suppose a tube let down from the moon, with 
yourself at one end, and the man at the other ; it would 
be some balk to the spirit of conversation, if you knew 
that the dialogue exchanged with that interesting theos- 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 177 

ophist would take two or three revolutions of a higher 
luminary in its passage. Yet for aught I know, you 
may be some parasangs nigher that primitive idea — 
Plato's man — than we in England here have the 
honor to reckon ourselves. 

Epistolary matter usually compriseth three topics : 
news, sentiment, and puns. In the latter, I include all 
non-serious subjects ; or subjects serious in themselves, 
but treated after my fashion, non-seriously. — And 
first, for news. In them the most desirable circum- 
stance, I suppose, is, that they shall be true. But what 
security can I have that what I now send you for truth 
shall not, before you get it, unaccountably turn into a 
lie ? For instance, our mutual friend P. is at this pres- 
ent writing — my Now — in good health, and enjoys a 
fair share of worldly rej)utation. You are glad to hear 
it. This is natural and friendly. But at this present 
reading — your Noiv — he may possibly be in the 
Bench, or going to be hanged, which in reason ought 
to abate something of your transport (i, e. at hearing he 
was well, &c.), or at least considerably to modify it. I 
am going to the play this evening, to have a laugh with 
Munden. You have no theatre, I think you told me, 

in your land of d d realities. You naturally lick 

your lips, and envy me my felicity. Think but a mo- 
ment, and you will correct the hateful emotion. Why 
it is Sunday morning with* you, and 1823. This con- 
fusion of tenses, this grand solecism of two presents, is 
in a degree common to all postage. But if I sent you 
word to Bath or Devizes, that I was expecting the 
aforesaid treat this evening, though at the moment you 
received the intelligence my full feast of fun would be 
over, yet there would be for a day or two after, as you 

VOL. III. 12 



178 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 

would well know, a smack, a relish left upon my men- 
tal palate, which would give rational encouragement 
for you to foster, a portion at least, of the disagreeable 
passion, which it was in part my intention to produce. 
But ten months hence, your envy or your sympathy 
would be as useless as a passion spent upon the dead. 
Not only does truth, in these long intervals, unessence 
herself, but (what is harder) one cannot venture a 
crude fiction, for the fear that it may ripen into a truth 
upon the voyage. What a wild improbable banter 

I put upon you some three years since of Will 

Weatherall having married a servant-maid ! I remem- 
ber gravely consulting you how we were to receive her, 
— for Will's wife was in no case to be rejected; and 
your no less serious replication in the matter ; how 
tenderly you advised an abstemious introduction of lit- 
erary topics before the lady, with a caution not to be 
too forward in bringing on the carpet matters more 
within the sphere of her intelligence ; your deliberate 
judgment, or rather wise suspension of sentence, how 
far jacks, and spits, and mops could with propriety be 
introduced as subjects ; whether the conscious avoiding 
of all such matters in discourse would not have a worse 
look than the taking of them casually in our way ; in 
what manner we should carry ourselves to our maid 
Becky, Mrs. William Weatherall being by ; whether 
we should show more delicacy, and a truer sense of 
resjDect for Will's wife, by treating Becky with our 
customary chiding before her, or by an unusual defer- 
ential civility paid to Becky as to a person of great 
worth, but thrown by the caprice of fate into a humble 
station. There were difficulties, I remember, on both 
sides, which you did me the favor to state with the pre- 



DISTANT COREESPONDENTS. 179 

cislon of a lawyer, united to the tenderness of a friend. 
I laughed in my sleeve at your solemn pleadings, when 
lo I while I was valuing myself upon this flam put upon 
you in New South Wales, the devil in England, jeal- 
ous possibly of any lie-children not his own, or working 
after my copy, has actually instigated our friend (not 
three days since) to the commission of a matrimony, 
which I had only conjured up for your diversion. 
William Weatherall has married Mrs. Cotterel's maid. 
But to take it in its truest sense, you will see, my dear 
F., that news from me must become history to you ; 
which I neither profess to write, nor indeed care much 
for reading. No person, under a diviner, can with any 
prospect of veracity conduct a correspondence at such 
an arm's length. Two prophets, indeed, might thus 
interchange intelligence with effect ; the epoch of the 
writer (Habakkuk) falling in with the true present 
time of the receiver (Daniel) ; but then we are no 
prophets. 

Then as to sentiment. It fares little better with 
that. This kind of dish, above all, requires to be 
served up hot ; or sent off in water-plates, that your 
friend may have it almost as warm as yourself. If it 
have time to cool, it is the most tasteless of all cold 
meats. I have often smiled at a conceit of the late 
Lord C. It seems that, travelling somewhere about 
Geneva, he came to some pretty green spot, or nook, 
where a willow, or something hung so fantastically and 
invitingly over a stream — was it ? — or a rock ? — no 
matter, — but the stillness and the repose, after aweary 
journey 'tis likely, in a languid moment of his Lord- 
ship's hot restless life, so took his fancy that he could 
imagine no place so proper, in the event of his death, 



180 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 

to lay Ms bones in. This was all very natural and ex- 
cusable as a sentiment, and shows his character in a 
very pleasing light. But when from a passing senti- 
ment it came to be an act ; and when, by a positive 
testamentary disposal, his remains were actually carried 
all that way fr'om England ; who was there, some 
desperate sentimentalists excepted, that did not ask the 
question. Why could not his Lordship have found a 
spot as solitary, a nook as romantic, a tree as green and 
pendent, with a stream as emblematic to his purpose, 
in Surrey, in Dorset, or in Devon ? Conceive the sen- 
timent boarded up, fr-eighted, entered at the Custom 
House (startling the tidewaiters with the novelty), 
hoisted into a ship. Conceive it pawed about and 
handled between the rude jests of tarpaulin ruffians, — 
a thing of its delicate texture, — the salt bilge wetting 
it till it became as vapid as a damaged lustring. Sup- 
pose it in material danger (mariners have some super- 
stition about sentiments) of being tossed over in a fresh 
gale to some propitiatory shark (spirit of Saint Goth- 
ard, save us from a quietus so foreign to the deviser's 
purpose !) but it has happily evaded a fishy consumma- 
tion. Trace it then to its lucky landing — at Lyons 
shall we say? — I have not the map before me — jostled 
upon four men's shoulders — baiting at this town — 
stopping to reft'esh at t'other village — waiting a pass- 
port here, a license there ; the sanction of the magis- 
tracy in this district, the concurrence of the ecclesiastics 
in that canton ; till at length it arrives at its destina- 
tion, tired out and jaded, from a brisk sentiment, into 
a feature of silly pride or tawdry senseless affectation. 
How few sentiments, my dear F., I am afraid we can 
set down, in the sailor's pMase, as quite sea-worthy. 



DISTANT COREESPONDENTS. 181 

Lastly, as to the agreeable levities, which, though 
contemptible in bulk, are the twinkling corpuscula 
which should irradiate a right friendly epistle, — your 
puns and small jests are, I apprehend, extremely cir- 
cumscribed in their sphere of action. They are so 
far from a capacity of being packed up and sent be- 
yond sea, they will scarce endure to be transported by 
hand from this room to the next. Their vigor is 
as the instant of their birth. Their nutriment for 
their brief existence is the intellectual atmosphere of 
the by-standers ; or this last is the fine slime of Mlus 
— the melior lutus — whose maternal recipiency is as 
necessary as the sol pater to their equivocal generation. 
A pun hath a hearty kind of present ear-kissing smack 
with it ; you can no more transmit it in its pristine 
flavor, than you can send a kiss. Have you not tried 
in some instances to palm off a yesterday's pun upon a 
gentleman, and has it answered ? Not but it was new 
to his hearing, but it did not seem to come new from 
you. It did not hitch in. It was like picking up at a 
village alehouse a two-days'-old newspaper. You have 
not seen it before, but you resent the stale thing as an 
affront. This sort of merchandise above all requires a 
quick return. A pun, and its recognitory laugh, must 
be coinstantaneous. The one is the brisk lightning, 
the other the fierce thunder. A moment's interval, 
and the link is snapped. A pun is reflected from a 
friend's face as from a mirror. Who would consult his 
sweet visnomy, if the polished surface were two or 
three minutes (not to speak of twelve months, my 
dear F.) in giving back its copy ? 

I cannot image to myself whereabout you are. 
When I try to fix it, Peter Wilkins's island comes 



182 DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 

across me. Sometimes you seem to be in the Hades 
of Thieves. I see Diogenes prying among you with 
his perpetual fruitless lantern. What must you be 
willing by this time to give for the sight of an honest 
man ! You must almost have forgotten how we look. 
And tell me, what your Sydneyites do ? are they 
th . . V . ng all day long ? Merciful heaven ! what 
property can stand against such a depredation ! The 
kangaroos — your Aborigines — do they keep their 
primitive simplicity un-Europe-tainted, with those lit- 
tle short fore puds, looking like a lesson framed by 
nature to the pickpocket ! Marry, for diving into 
fobs they are rather lamely provided, a priori; but 
if the hue-and-cry were once up, they would show 
as fair a pair of hind-shifters as the expertest loco- 
motor in the colony. We hear the most improb- 
able tales at this distance. Pray, is it true that 
the young Spartans among you are born with six 
fingers, which spoils their scanning? It must look 
very odd; but use reconciles. For their scansion, it 
is less to be regretted, for if they take it into their 
heads to be poets, it is odds but they turn out, the 
greater part of them, vile plagiarists. Is there much 
difPerence to see, too, between the son of a th . . f, 
and the grandson ? or where does the taint stop ? Do 
you bleach in three or in four generations ? I have 
many questions to put, but ten Delphic voyages can 
be made in a shorter time than it will take to satisfy 
my scruples. Do you grow your own hemp ? What 
is your staple trade, — exclusive of the national pro- 
fession, I mean ? Your locksmiths, I take it, are some 
of your great capitalists. 

I am insensibly chatting to you as familiarly as 



DISTANT CORRESPONDENTS. 183 

when we used to exchange good-morrows out of our 
old contiguous windows, in pump-famed Hare Court 
in the Temple. Why did you ever leave that quiet 
corner ? Why did I ? — with its complement of four 
poor elms, from whose smoke-dyed barks, the theme 
of jesting ruralists, I picked my first lady-birds ! My 
heart is as dry as that spring sometimes proves in a 
thirsty August, when I revert to the space that is 
between us ; a length of passage enough to render 
obsolete the phrases of our English letters before they 
can reach you. But while I talk, I think you hear 
me, — thoughts dallying with vain surmise, — 

Aye me ! while thee the seas and sounding shores 
Hold far away. 

Come back, before I am grown into a very old 
man, so as you shall hardly know me. Come, before 
Bridget walks on crutches. Girls whom you left 
children have become sage matrons while you are 
tarrying there. The blooming Miss W — r (you re- 
member Sally W — r) called upon us yesterday, an 
aged crone. Folks, whom you knew, die off every 
year. Formerly, I thought that death was wearing 
out, — I stood ramparted about with so many healthy 
friends. The departure of J. W., two springs back, 
corrected my delusion. Since then the old divorcer 
has been busy. If you do not make haste to return, 
there will be little left to greet you, of me, or mine. 



184 THE PEAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPEES. 

I LIKE to meet a sweep — understand me — not a 
grown sweeper, — old chimney-sweepers are by no 
means attractive, — but one of those tender novices, 
blooming through their first nigritude, the maternal 
washings not quite effaced from the cheek, — such as 
come forth with the dawn, or somewhat earlier, with 
their little professional notes sounding like the peep peep 
of a young sparrow ; or liker to the matin lark should 
I pronounce them, in their aerial ascents not seldom 
anticipating the sunrise ? 

I have a kindly yearning towards these dim specks 

— poor blots — innocent blacknesses — 

I reverence these young Africans of oiu* own growth 

— these almost clergy imps, who sport their cloth 
without assumption ; and from their little pulpits, (the 
tops of chimneys,) in the nipping air of a December 
morning, preach a lesson of patience to mankind. 

(JV^hen a child, what a mysterious pleasure it was to 
witness their operation ! to see a chit no bigger than 
one's self, enter, one knew not by what process, into 
what seemed the fauces Averni^ — to pursue him in 
imagination, as he went sounding on through so many 
dark stifling caverns, horrid shades ! — to shudder with 
the idea that " now, surely, he must be lost forever ! " 

— to revive at hearing his feeble shout of discovered 
daylight, — and then (O fulness of delight !) running 
out of doors, to come just in time to see the sable 
phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished weapon 
of his art victorious like some flao; waved over a con- 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 185 

quered citadel ! I seem to remember having been 
told that a bad sweep was once left in a stack with his 
brush, to indicate which way the wind blew. It was 
an awful spectacle, certainly ; not much unlike the old 
stage direction in Macbeth, where the " Apparition of 
a child crowned, with a tree in his hand, rises." 

Reader, if thou meetest one of these small gentry in 
thy early rambles, it is good to give him a penny. It 
is better to give him twopence. If it be starving 
weather, and to the proper troubles of his hard occu- 
pation, a pair of kibed heels (no unusual accompani- 
ment) be superadded, the demand on thy humanity 
will surely rise to a tester. 

There is a composition, the groundwork of which 
I have understood to be the sweet wood yclept sassa- 
fras. This wood, boiled down to a kind of tea, and 
tempered with an infusion of milk and sugar, hath to 
some tastes a delicacy beyond the China luxury. I 
know not how thy palate may relish it; for myself, 
with every deference to the judicious Mr. Read, who 
hath time out of mind kept open a shop (the only one 
he avers in London) for the vending of this " whole- 
some and pleasant beverage," on the south side of 
Fleet Street, as thou approachest Bridge Street — the 
only Salopian house — I have never yet ventured to dip 
my own particular lip in a basin of his commended 
ingredients — a cautious premonition to the olfactories 
constantly whispering to me, that my stomach must 
infallibly, with all due courtesy, decline it. Yet I have 
seen palates, otherwise not uninstructed in dietetical 
elegancies, sup it up with avidity. 

I know not by what particular conformation of the 
organ it happens, but I have always found that this 



186 THE PEAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPEKS. 

composition is surprisingly gratifying to the palate of a 
young chimney-sweeper, — whether the oily particles 
(sassafras is slightly oleaginous) do attenuate and 
soften the fuliginous concretions, which are sometimes 
found (in dissections) to adhere to the roof of the 
mouth in these unfledged practitioners ; or whether 
Nature, sensible that she had mingled too much of 
bitter wood in the lot of these raw victims, caused to 
grow out of the earth her sassafras for a sweet lenitive ; 

— but so it is, that no possible taste or odor to the 
senses of a young chimney-sweeper can convey a deli- 
cate excitement comparable to this mixture. Being 
penniless, they will yet hang their black heads over 
the ascending steam, to gratify one sense if possible, 
seemingly no less pleased than those domestic animals 

— cats — when they purr over a new-found sprig of 
valerian. There is something more in these sympathies 
than philosophy can inculcate. 

Now albeit Mr. Read boasteth, not without reason, 
that his is the only SaloiAan house ; yet be it known to 
thee, reader, — if thou art one who keepest what are 
called good hours, thou art haply ignorant of the fact, 

— he hath a race of industrious imitators, who from 
stalls, and under open sky, dispense the same savory 
mess to humbler customers, at that dead time of the 
dawn, when (as extremes meet) the rake, reeling home 
from his midnight cups, and the hard-handed artisan 
leaving his bed to resume the premature labors of the 
day, jostle, not unfrequently to the manifest disconcert- 
ing of the former, for the honors of the pavement. It 
is the time when, in summer, between the expired and 
the not yet relumined kitchen-fires, the kennels of 
our fair metropolis give forth their least satisfactory 



THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 187 

odors. The rake, who wisheth to dissipate his o'er- 
night vapors in more grateful coffee, curses the unge- 
nial fiiine as he passeth ; but the artisan stops to taste, 
and blesses the fragrant breakfast. 

This is saloop — the precocious herb- woman's darling, 
— the delight of the early gardener, who transports his 
smoking cabbages by break of day from Hammersmith 
to Covent Garden's famed piazzas, — the delight, 
and oh 1 I fear, too often the envy, of the unpennied 
sweep. Him shouldst thou haply encounter, with his 
dim visage pendent over the grateful steam, regale him 
with a sumptuous basin (it will cost thee but three 
lialf-j3ennies) and a slice of delicate bread and butter 
(an added half-penny) — so may thy culinary fires, 
eased of the o'ercharged secretions from thy worse- 
placed hospitalities, curl up a lighter volume to the 
welkin, — so may the descending soot never taint thy 
costly well-ingredienced soups, — nor the odious cry, 
quick-reaching from street to street, of \hQ fired cJiim- 
ney^ invite the rattling engines from ten adjacent par- 
ishes, to disturb for a casual scintillation thy peace and 
pocket ! 

I am by nature extremely susceptible of street 
affronts ; the jeers and taunts of the populace ; the 
lowbred triumph they display over the casual trip, or 
splashed stocking, of a gentleman. Yet can I endure 
the jocularity of a young sweep with something more 
than forgiveness. In the last winter but one, pacing 
along Cheapside with my accustomed precipitation 
when I walk westward, a treacherous slide brought 
me upon my back in an instant. I scrambled up with 
pain and shame enough, — yet outwardly trying to 
face it down, as if nothing had happened, — when the 



188 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 

roguish grin of one of these young wits encountered 
me. There he stood, pointing me out with his dusky 
finger to the mob, and to a poor woman (I suppose his 
mother) in particular, till the tears for the exquisiteness 
of the fan (so he thought it) worked themselves out 
at the corners of his poor red eyes, red from many 
a previous weeping, and soot-inflamed, yet twinkling 
through all with such a joy, snatched out of desolation, 

that Hogarth hut Hogarth has got him already 

(how could he miss him ?) in the March to Finchley, 
grinning at the pieman, — there he stood, as he stands 
in the picture, irremovable, as if the jest was to last 
forever, — -with such a maximum of glee, and minimum 
of mischief, in his mirth, — for the grin of a genuine 
sweep hath absolutely no malice in it, — that I could 
have been content, if the honor of a gentleman might 
endure it, to have remained his butt and his mockery 
till midnight. 

(Jl am by theory obdurate to the seductiveness of what 
are called a fine set of teeth. Every pair of rosy lips 
(the ladies must pardon me) is a casket presumably 
holding such jewels ; but, methinks, they should take 
leave to " air " them as frugally as possible. The fine 
lady, or fine gentleman, who show me their teeth, show 
me bones. Yet must I confess, that from the mouth of 
a true sweep a display (even to ostentation) of those 
white and shining ossifications, strikes me as an agree- 
able anomaly in manners, and an allowable piece of 
foppery. It is, as when 

. A sable cloud 
Turns forth her silver lining on the night. 

It is like some remnant of gentry not quite extinct ; 
a badge of better days ; a hint of nobility ; — and, 



THE PKAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPEES. 189 

doubtless, under the obscuring darkness and double 
night of their forlorn disguisement, oftentimes lurketh 
good blood, and gentle conditions, derived from lost 
ancestry, and a lapsed pedigree.]! The premature ap- 
prenticements of these tender victims give but too 
much encouragement, I fear, to clandestine and almost 
infantile abductions ; the seeds of civility and true 
courtesy, so often discernible in these young grafts, 
(not otherwise to be accounted for,) plainly hint at 
some forced adoptions ; many noble Rachels, mourning 
for their children, even in our days, countenance the 
fact ; the tales of fairy-spiriting may shadow a lament- 
able verity, and the recovery of the young Montagu be 
but a solitary instance of good fortune out of many 
irreparable and hopeless defiliations. 

In one of the state-beds at Arundel Castle, a few 
years since — under a ducal canopy — (that seat of the 
Howards is an object of curiosity to visitors, chiefly 
for its beds, in which the late duke was especially a 
connoisseur) — encircled with curtains of delicatest 
crimson, with starry coronets inwoven — folded be- 
tween a pair of sheets whiter and softer than the lap 
where Venus lulled Ascanius — was discovered by 
chance, after all methods of search had failed, at noon- 
day, fast asleep, a lost chimney-sweeper. The little 
creature, having somehow confounded his passage 
among the intricacies of those lordly chimneys, by 
some unknown aperture had alighted upon this mag- 
nificent chamber ; and, tired with his tedious explora- 
tions, was unable to resist the delicious invitement to 
repose, which he there saw exhibited ; so creeping be- 
tween the sheets very quietly, laid his black head upon 
the pillow, and slept like a young Howard. 



190 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 

Such is the account given to the visitors at the 
Castle. But I cannot help seeming to perceive a con- 
firmation of what I have just hmted at in this story. 
A high instinct was at work in the case, or I am mis- 
taken. Is it probable that a poor child of that descrip- 
tion, with whatever weariness he might be visited, 
would have ventured, under such a penalty as he 
would be taught to expect, to uncover the sheets of a 
duke's bed, and deliberately to lay himself down be- 
tween them, when the rug, or the carpet, presented an 
obvious couch, still far above his pretensions, — is this 
probable, I would ask, if the great power of nature, 
which I contend for, had not been manifested within 
him, prompting to the adventure ? Doubtless this 
young nobleman (for such my mind misgives me that 
he must be) was allured by some memory, not amount- 
ing to full consciousness, of his condition in infancy, 
when he was used to be lapped by his mother, or his 
nurse, in just such sheets as he there found, into which 
he was now but creeping back as into his proper incu- 
nabula^ and resting-place. By no other theory than by 
this sentiment of a pre existent state (as I may call it), 
can I explain a deed so venturous, and, indeed, upon 
any other system so indecorous, in this tender, but un- 
seasonable, sleeper. 

My pleasant friend Jem White was so impressed 
with a belief of metamorphoses like this frequently 
taking place, that in some sort to reverse the wrongs 
of fortune in these poor changelings, he instituted an 
annual feast of chimney-sweepers, at which it was his 
pleasure to officiate as host and waiter. It was a 
solemn supper held in Smithfield, upon the yearly 
return of the fair of St. Bartholomew. Cards were 



THE P RAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 191 

issued a week before to the master-sweeps in and 
about the metropoHs, confining the invitation to their 
younger fry. Now and then an elderly stripling would 
get in among us, and be good-naturedly winked at ; 
but our main body were infantry. One unfortunate 
wight, indeed, who, relying upon his dusky suit, had 
intruded himself into our party, but by tokens was 
providentially discovered in time to be no chimney- 
sweeper, (all is not soot which looks so,) was quoited 
out of the presence with universal indignation, as not 
having on the weddmg garment ; but in general the 
greatest harmony prevailed. The place chosen was a 
convenient spot among the pens, at the north side of 
the fair, not so far distant as to be impervious to the 
agreeable hubbub of that vanity ; but remote enough 
not to be obvious to the interruption of every gaping 
spectator in it. The guests assembled about seven. In 
those little temporary parlors three tables were spread 
with napery, not so fine as substantial, and at every 
board a comely hostess presided with her pan of hissing 
sausages. The nostrils of the young rogues dilated at 
the savor. James White, as head waiter, had charge 
of the first table ; and myself, with our trusty com- 
panion BiGOD, ordinarily ministered to the other two. 
There was clambering and jostling, you may be sure, 
who should get at the first table, — for Rochester in his 
maddest days could not have done the humors of the 
scene with more spirit than my friend. After some 
general expression of thanks for the honor the company 
had done him, his inaugural ceremony was to clasp the 
greasy waist of old dame Ursula (the fattest of the 
three), that stood frying and fretting, half-blessing, 
half-cursing " the gentleman," and imprint upon her 



192 THE PRAISE OF CHIMNEY-SWEEPERS. 

chaste lips a tender salute, whereat the universal host 
would set up a shout that tore the concave, while 
hundreds of grinning teeth startled the night with 
their brightness. O it was a pleasure to see the sable 
younkers lick in the unctuous meat, with Jiis more 
unctuous sayings, — how he would fit the titbits to 
the puny mouths, reserving the lengthier links for the 
seniors, — how he would intercept a morsel even in the 
jaws of some young desperado, declaring it " must to 
the pan again to be browned, for it was not fit for a 
gentleman's eating," — how he would recommend this 
slice of white bread, or that piece of kissing-crust, to 
a tender juvenile, advising them all to have a care of 
cracking their teeth, which were their best patrimony, 
■ — how genteelly he would deal about the small ale, as 
if it were wine, naming the brewer, and protesting, if 
it were not good, he should lose their custom ; with a 
special recommendation to wipe the lip before drink- 
ing. Then we had our toasts — " The King !" — " the 
Cloth," — which, whether they understood or not, was 
equally diverting and flattering ; — and for a crowning 
sentiment, which never failed, '/ May the Brush super- 
sede the Laurel I " All these, and fifty other fancies, 
which were rather felt than comprehended by his 
guests, would he utter, standing upon tables, and pref- 
acing every sentiment with a " Gentlemen, give me 
leave to propose so and so," which was a prodigious 
comfort to those young orphans ; every now and then 
stuffing into his mouth (for it did not do to be squeam- 
ish on these occasions) indiscriminate pieces of those 
reeking sausages, which pleased them mightily, and 
was the savoriest part, you may believe, of the enter- 
tainment. -_ 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 193 

Golden lads and lasses must, 

As chininey-sweepers, come to dust. — 

James White is extinct, and with him these suppers 
have long ceased. He carried away with him half the 
fan of the world when he died — of my world at least. 
His old clients look for him among the pens ; and, 
missing him, reproach the altered feast of St. Bartholo- 
mew, and the glory of Smithfield departed forever. 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 

IN THE METROPOLIS. 

The all-sweeping besom of societarian reformation 
— your only modern Alcides's club to rid the time of 
its abuses — is uplift with many-handed sway to extir- 
pate the last fluttering tatters of the bugbear Men- 
dicity from the metropolis. Scrips, wallets, bags, — 
staves, dogs, and crutches, — the whole mendicant' 
fraternity with all their baggage, are fast posting out 
of the purlieus of this eleventh persecution. From the 
crowded crossing, from the corners of streets and turn- 
ings of alleys, the parting Genius of Beggary is " with 
sighing sent." 

I do not approve of this wholesale going to work, this 
impertinent crusado, or helium ad exterminationem^ pro- 
claimed against a species. Much good might be sucked 
from these Beggars. 

They were the oldest and the honorablest form of 
pauperism. Their appeals were to our common na- 

VOL. Ill, 13 



194 A COxMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGAKS. 

tiire ; less revolting to an ingenuous mind than to 
be a suppliant to tlie particular humors or caprice of 
any fellow-creature, or set of fellow-creatures, paro- 
chial or societarian. Theirs were the only rates unin- 
vidious in the levy, ungrudged in the assessment. 

There was a dignity springing from the very depth 
of their desolation ; as to be naked is to be so much 
nearer to the being a man, than to go in livery. 

The greatest spirits have felt this in their reverses ; 
and when Dionysius from king turned schoolmaster, 
do we feel anything towards him but contempt? 
Could Vandyke have made a picture of him, swaying 
a ferula for a sceptre, which would have affected our 
minds with the same heroic pity, the same compassion- 
ate admiration, with which we regard his Belisarius 
begging for an obolum ^ Would the moral have been 
more gracefal, more pathetic ? 

The Blind Beggar in the legend — the father of 
pretty Bessy — whose story doggerel rhymes and ale- 
house signs cannot so degrade or attenuate, but that 
some sparks of a lustrous spirit will shine through the 
disofuisements, — this noble Earl of Cornwall (as indeed 
he was) and memorable sport of fortune, fleeing from 
the unjust sentence of his liege lord, stript of all, and 
seated on the flowering green of Bethnal, with his more 
fresh and springing daughter by his side, illumining his 
rags and his beggary, — would the child and parent 
have cut a better figure, doing the honors of a counter, 
or expiating their fallen condition upon the three-foot 
eminence of some sempstering shopboard ? 

In tale or history your Beggar is ever the just anti- 
pode to your King. The poets and romancical writers 
(as dear Margaret Newcastle would call them), when 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGAKS. 195 

they would most sharply and feelingly paint a reverse 
of fortune, never stop till they have brought down their 
hero in good earnest to rags and the wallet. The 
depth of the descent illustrates the height he falls from. 
There is no medium which can be presented to the 
imagination without offence. There is no breaking 
the fall. Lear, thrown from his palace, must divest 
him of his garments, till he answer " mere nature ; " 
and Cresseid, fallen from a prince's love, must extend 
her pale arms, pale with other whiteness than of beauty, 
supplicating lazar alms with bell and clap-dish. 

The Lucian wits knew this very well ; and, with a 
converse policy, when they would express scorn of 
greatness without the pity, they show us an Alexander 
in the shades cobbling shoes, or a Semiramis getting up 
foul linen. 

How would it sound in song, that a great monarch 
had declined his affections upon the daughter of a 
baker ! yet do we feel the imagination at all violated 
when we read the " true ballad," where King Cophe- 
tua woos the beggar maid ? 

Pauperism, pauper, poor man, are expressions of pity, 
but pity alloyed with contempt. No one properly con- 
temns a beggar. Poverty is a comparative thing, and 
each degree of it is mocked by its " neighbor grice." 
Its poor rents and comings-in are soon summed up and 
told. Its pretences to property are almost ludicrous. 
Its pitiful attempts to save excite a smile. Every scorn- 
ful companion can weigh his trifle-bigger purse against 
it..,_ Poor man reproaches poor man in the streets with 
impolitic mention of his condition, his own being a 
shade better, while the rich pass by and jeer at both. 
No rascally comparative insults a Beggar, or thinks of 



196 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS 

weighing purses with him. He is not in the scale of 
comparison. He is not under the measure of property. 
He confessedly hath none, any more than a dog or a 
sheep. No one twitteth him with ostentation above his 
means. No one accuses him of pride, or upbraideth 
him with mock humility. None jostle with him for the 
wall, or pick quarrels for precedency. No wealthy 
neighbor seeketh to eject him from his tenement. No 
man sues him. No man goes to law with him. If I 
were not the independent gentleman that I am, rather 
than I would be a retainer to the great, a led captain, 
or a poor relation, I would choose, out of the delicacy 
and true greatness of my mind, to be a Beggar. 

Rags, which are the reproach of poverty, are the 
Beggar's robes, and graceful insignia of his profession, 
his tenure, his full dress, the suit in which he is ex- 
pected to show himself in public. He is never out of 
the fashion, or limpeth awkwardly behind it. He is 
not require(^o put on court mourning. He weareth 
all colors, fearing none. His costume hath undergone 
less change than the Quaker's. He is the only man in 
the universe who is not obliged to study appearances. 
The ups and downs of the world concern him no 
longer. He alone continueth in one stay. The price 
of stock or land affecteth him not. The fluctuations 
of agricultural or commercial prosperity touch him 
not, or at worst but change his customers. He is not 
expected to become bail or surety for any one. No 
man troubleth him with questioning his religion or 
politics. He is the only free man in the universe. 

The Mendicants of this great city were so many of 
her sights, her lions. I can no more spare them than 
I could the Cries of London. No corner of a street 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 197 

is complete witliont them. They are as indispensable 
as the Ballad Singer; and in their picturesque attire 
as ornamental as the signs of old London. They were 
the standing morals, emblems, mementos, dial-mottoes, 
the spital sermons, the books for children, the salutary 
checks and pauses to the high and rushing tide of 
greasy citizenry, — 

Look 
Upon that poor and broken bankrupt there. 

Above all, those old blind Tobits that used to line the 
wall of Lincoln's-Inn Garden, before modern fastid- 
iousness had expelled them, casting up their ruined 
orbs to catch a ray of pity, and (if possible) of Tight, 
with their faithful Dog Guide at their feet, — whither 
are they fled ? or into what corners, blind as them- 
selves, have they been driven, out of the wholesome 
air and sun-warmth ? immersed between four walls, in 
what withering poor-house do they endure the penalty 
of double darkness, where the chink of the dropt half- 
penny no more consoles their forlorn b^avement, far 
from the sound of the cheerful and hope-stirring tread 
of the passenger ? Where hang their useless staves ? 
and who will farm their dogs ? — Have the overseers 
of St. L — caused them to be shot ? or were they tied 
up in sacks, and dropt into the Thames, at the sugges- 
tion of B — , the mild rector of ? 

Well fare the soul ©f tinfastidious Vincent Bourne, 
most classical, and at the same time, most Enghsh of 
the Latinists ! — who has treated of this human and 
quadrupedal alliance, this dog and man friendship, in 
the sweetest of his poems, the EpitapMum in Canem, 
or Dog's Epitaph. Reader, peruse it ; and say, if 
customary sights, which could call up such gentle 



198 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 

poetry as this, were of a nature to do more harm or 
good to the moral sense of the passengers through the 
daily thoroughfares of a vast and busy metropolis. 

Pauperis hie Iri requieseo Lyciscus, herilis, 
Dum vixi, tutela vigil columenque senectse, 
Dux cseco fldus : nee, me ducente, solebat, 
Prsetenso hinc atque liinc baculo, per iniqua locorura 
Incertam explorare viam ; sed fila secutus, 
Quae dubios regerent passus, vestigia tuta 
Fixit inofifenso gressu; gelidumque sedile 
In nudo nactus saxo, qua prsetereuntium 
XJnda frequens confluxit, ibi miserisque tenebras 
Lamentis, noctemque oculis ploravit obortam. 
Ploravit nee frustra; obolum dedit alter et alter, 
Quels corda et mentem indiderat natura benignam. 
Ad latus interea jacui sopitus herile, 
Vel mediis vigil in somnis; ad herllia jussa 
Auresque atqae animum arrectus, seu frustula amicfe 
Porrexit sociasque dapes, seu longa diei 
Tgedia perpessus, reditum sub nocte parabat. 
Hi mores, hsec vita fuit, dum fata sinebant, 
Dum neque languebam morbis, nee inerte senecta ; 
Quse tandem obrepsit, veterique satellite csecum 
Orbavit dominum : prisci sed gratia facti 
Ne tota intereat, longos delecta per amios, 
Exiguum hunc Irus tumulum de cespite fecit, 
Etsi inopis, non ingratee, munuscula dextrse ; 
Carmine signavitque brevi, dominumque canemque 
Quod memoret, fidumque canem dominumque benignutn. 

Poor Irus's faithful wolf-dog here I lie, 

That wont to tend my old blind master's steps, 

His guide and guard : nor, while my service lasted, 

Had he occasion for that staff, with which 

He now goes picking out his path in fear 

Over the highways and crossings ; but would plant, 

Safe in the conduct of my friendly string, 

A firm foot forward still, till he had reach' d 

His poor seat on some stone, nigh where the tide 

Of passers-by in thickest confluence flow'd: 

To whom with loud and passionate laments 

From morn to eve his dark estate he wail'd. 

Nor wail'd to all in vain: some here and there, 

The well-disposed and good, their pennies gave. 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 199 

I meantime at his feet obsequious slept ; 

Not all-asleep in sleep, bat heart and ear 

Prick'd up at his least motion; to receive 

At his kind hand ray customary crumbs, 

And common portion in his feast of scraps ; 

Or when night warn'd us homeward, tired and spent 

With our long day and tedious beggary. 

Those were my manners, this my way of life, 
Till age and slow disease me overtook, 
And sever' d from my sightless master's side. 
But lest the grace of so good deeds should die, 
Through tract of years in mute oblivion lost. 
This slender tomb of turf hath Irus reared, 
Cheap monument of no ungrudging hand. 
And with short verse inscribed it, to attest, 
In long and lasting union to attest, 
The virtues of the Beggar and his Dog. 

These dim eyes have in vain explored for some 
months past a well-known figure, or part of the figure 
of a man, who used to glide his comely upper half over 
the pavements of London, wheeling along with most 
ingenious celerity upon a machine of wood ; a spectacle 
to natives, to foreigners, and to children. He was of a 
robust make, with a florid sailor-like complexion, and 
his head was bare to the storm and sunshine. He was 
a natural curiosity, a speculation to the scientific, a 
prodigy to the simple. The infant would stare at the 
mighty man brought down to his own level. The 
common cripple would despise his own pusillanimity, 
viewing the hale stoutness, and hearty heart, of this 
half-limbed giant. Few but must have noticed him ; 
for the accident, which brought him low, took place 
during the riots of 1780, and he has been a groundling 
so long. He seemed earthborn, an Ant^us, and to 
suck in fresh vigor from the soil which he neighbored. 
He was a grand fragment ; as good as an Elgin marble. 
The nature, which should have recruited his reft legs 



200 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGARS. 

and thighs, was not lost, but only retired into his upper 
parts, and he was half a Hercules. I heard a tremen- 
dous voice thundering and growling, as before an earth- 
quake, and casting down my eyes, it was this mandrake 
reviling a steed that had started at his portentous ap- 
pearance. He seemed to want but his just stature to 
have rent the offending quadruped in shivers. He was 
as the man-part of a centaur, from which the horse-half 
had been cloven in some dire Lapithan controversy. 
He moved on, as if he could have made shift with yet 
half of the body-portion which was left him. The os 
sublime was not wanting ; and he threw out yet a jolly 
countenance upon the heavens. Forty-and-two years 
had he driven this out-of-door trade ; and now that his 
hair is grizzled in the service, but his good spirits no 
way impaired, because he is not content to exchange 
his free air and exercise for the restraints of a poor- 
house, he is expiating his contumacy in one of those 
houses (ironically christened) of Correction. 

Was a daily spectacle like this to be deemed a nui- 
sance, which called for legal interference to remove ? or 
not rather a salutary and a touching object, to the pas- 
sers-by in a great city ? Among her shows, her muse- 
ums, and supplies for ever-gaping curiosity, (and what 
else but an accumulation of sight — endless sights — is 
a great city ; or for what else is it desirable ?) was there 
not room for one Lusus (not Naturce^ indeed, but) 
Accidentium ? What if in forty-and-two years' going 
about, the man had scraped together enough to give a 
portion to his child, (as the rumor ran,) of a few hun- 
dreds, — whom had he injured ? — whom had he im- 
posed upon ? The contributors had enjoyed their sight 
for their pennies. What if after being exposed all day 



A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGAES. 201 

to the heats, the rains, and the frosts of heaven, — shuf- 
fling his ungainly trunk along in an elaborate and pain- 
ful motion, — he was enabled to retire at night to enjoy 
himself at a club of his fellow cripples over a dish of 
hot meat and vegetables, as the charge was gravely 
brought against him by a clergyman deposing before a 
House of Commons' Committee, — was this^ or was his 
truly paternal consideration, which (if a fact) deserved 
a statue rather than a whipping-post, and is inconsistent 
at least with the exaggeration of nocturnal orgies which 
he has been slandered with, - — a reason that he should 
be deprived of his chosen, harmless, nay, edifying way 
of life, and be committed in hoary age for a sturdy 
vagabond ? 

There was a Yorick once, whom it would not have 
shamed to have sat down at the cripples' feast, and to 
have thrown in his benediction, ay, and his mite too, 
for a companionable symbol. " Age, thou hast lost thy 
breed." 

Half of these stories about the prodigious fortunes 
made by begging are (I verily believe) misers' calum- 
nies. One was much talked of in the public papers 
some time since, and the usual charitable inferences 
deduced. A clerk in the bank was surprised with the 
announcement of a five-hundred-pound legacy left him 
by a person whose name he was a stranger to. It seems 
that in his daily morning walks from Peckham (or 
some village thereabouts) where he lived, to his office, 
it had been his practice for the last twenty years to 
drop his half-penny duly into the hat of some blind 
Bartimeus, that sat begging alms by the way-side in 
the Borough. The good old beggar recognized his 
daily benefactor by the voice only ; and, when he died, 



202 A COMPLAINT OF THE DECAY OF BEGGAES. 

left all the amassings of his alms (that had been half a 
century perhaps in the accumulating), to his old bank 
friend. Was this a story to purse up people's hearts, 
and pennies, against giving an alms to the blind ? — or 
not rather a beautiful moral of well-directed charity 
on the one part, and noble gratitude upon the other ? 

I sometimes wish I had been that bank clerk. 

I seem to remember a poor old grateful kind of crea- 
ture, blinking, and looking up with his no eyes in the 
sun. 

Is it possible I could have steeled my purse against 
him? 

Perhaps I had no small change. 

Keader, do not be frightened at the hard words, im- 
position, imposture — give^ and ash no questions. Cast 
thy bread upon the waters. Some have unawares (like 
this bank clerk) entertained angels. 

Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted 
distress. Act a charity sometimes. When a poor 
creature (outwardly and visibly such) comes before 
thee, do not stay to inquire whether the " seven small 
children," in whose name he implores thy assistance, 
have a veritable existence. Rake not into the bowels 
of unwelcome truth, to save a half-penny. It is good 
to believe him. If he be not all that he pretendeth, 
give^ and under a personate father of a family, think 
(if thou pleasest) that thou hast relieved an indigent 
bachelor. When they come with their counterfeit 
looks, and mumping tones, think them players. You 
pay your money to see a comedian feign these things, 
which, concerning these poor people, thou canst not 
certainly tell whether they are feigned or not. 



A DISSEKTATION UPON ROAST PIG, 203 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 

Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, wliicli my 
friend M. was obliging enougli to read and explain to 
me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat 
raw, clawing or biting it from the living animal, just as 
they do in Abyssinia to this day. This period is not 
obscurely hinted at by their great Confucius in the 
second chapter of his Mundane Mutations, where he 
designates a kind of golden age by the term Cho-fang, 
literally the Cooks' Holiday. The manuscript goes on 
to say, that the art of roasting, or rather broiling 
(which I take to be the elder brother) was accidentally 
discovered in the manner following : The swineherd, 
Ho-ti, having gone out into the woods one morning, as 
his manner was, to collect mast for his hogs, left his 
cottage in the care of his eldest son. Bo-bo, a great 
lubberly boy, who being fond of playing with fire, as 
younkers of his age commonly are, let some sparks 
escape into a bundle of straw, which kindling quickly, 
spread the conflagration over every part of their poor 
mansion, till it was reduced to ashes. Together with 
the cottage, (a sorry antediluvian makeshift of a build- 
ing, you may think it,) what was of much more im- 
portance, a fine litter of new-farrowed pigs, no less than 
nine in number, perished. China pigs have been es- 
teemed a luxury all over the East, from the remotest 
periods that we read of. Bo-bo was in the utmost con- 
sternation, as you may think, not so much for the sake 
of the tenement, which his father and he could easily 
build up again with a few dry branches, and the labor 



204 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 

of an hour or two, at any time, as for the loss of the 
pigs. While he was thinking what he should say to 
his father, and wringing his hands over the smoking 
remnants of one of those untimely sufferers, an odor 
assailed his nostrils, unlike any scent which he had 
before experienced. What could it proceed from ? — 
not from the burnt cottage, — he had smelt that smell 
before, — - indeed this was by no means the first accident 
of the kind which had occurred through the negligence 
of this unlucky young firebrand. Much less did it 
resemble that of any known herb, weed, or flower. A 
premonitory moistening at the same time overflowed 
his nether lip. He knew not what to think. He next 
stooped down to feel the pig, if there were any signs of 
life in it. He burnt his fingers, and to cool them he 
applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some 
of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away 
with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the 
world's life indeed, for before him no man had known 
it) he tasted — er adding ! Again he felt and fumbled 
at the pig. It did not burn him so much now, still he 
licked his fingers from a sort of habit. The truth at 
length broke into his slow understanding, that it was 
the pig that smelt so, and the pig that tasted so deli- 
cious ; and surrendering himself up to the new-born 
pleasure, he fell to tearing up whole handfuls of the 
scorched skin with the flesh next it, and was cramming 
it down his throat in his beastly fashion, when his sire 
entered amid the smoking rafters, armed with retribu- 
tory cudgel, and finding how affairs stood, began to 
rain blows upon the young rogue's shoulders, as thick 
as hailstones, which Bo-bo heeded not any more than 
if they had been flies. The tickling pleasure, which he 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 205 

experienced in liis lower regions, had rendered liim 
quite callous to any inconveniences he might feel in 
those remote quarters. His father might lay on, but 
he could not beat him from his pig, till he had fairly 
made an end of it, when, becoming a little more sen- 
sible of his situation, something like the following dia- 
logue ensued. 

" You graceless whelp, what have you got there 
devouring? Is it not enough that you have burnt 
me down three houses with your dog's tricks, and be 
hanged to you ! but you must be eating fire, and I 
know not what ; — what have you got there, I say ? " 

" O father, the pig, the pig ! do come and taste how 
nice the burnt pig eats." 

The ears of Ho-ti tingled with horror. He cursed 
his son, and he cursed himself that ever he should beget 
a son that should eat burnt pig. 

Bo-bo, whose scent was wonderfully sharpened since 
morning, soon raked out another pig, and fairly rend- 
ing it asunder, thrust the lesser half by main force into 
the fists of Ho-ti, still shouting out, " Eat, eat, eat the 
burnt pig, father, only taste ; O Lord ! " — with such- 
like barbarous ejaculations, cramming all the while as 
if he would choke. 

Ho-ti trembled every joint while he grasped the 
abominable thing, wavering whether he should not 
put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, 
when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done 
his son's and applying the same remedy to them, he in 
his turn tasted some of its flavor, which, make what 
sour mouths he would for a pretence, proved not alto- 
gether displeasing to him. In conclusion (for the 
manuscript here is a little tedious) both father and 



20G A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 

son fairly set down to the mess, and never left off till 
they had despatched all that remamed of the litter. 

Bo-bo was strictly enjoined not to let the secret es- 
cape, for the neighbors would certainly have stoned 
them for a couple of abominable wretches, who could 
think of improving upon the good meat which God had 
sent them. Nevertheless, strange stories got about. 
It was observed that Ho-ti's cottage was burnt down 
now more frequently than ever. Nothing but fires 
from this time forward. Some would break out in 
broad day, others in the night time. As often as the 
sow farrowed, so sure was the house of Ho-ti to be in a 
blaze ; and Ho-ti himself, which was the more remark- 
able, instead of chastising his son, seemed to grow more 
indulgent to him than ever. At length they were 
watched, the terrible mystery discovered, and father 
and son summoned to take their trial at Pekin, then an 
inconsiderable assize town. Evidence was given, the 
obnoxious food itself produced in court, and verdict 
about to be pronounced, when the foreman of the jury 
begged that some of the burnt pig, of which the cul- 
prits stood accused, might be handed into the box. 
He handled it, and they all handled it ; and burning 
their fingers, as Bo-bo and his father had done before 
them, and nature prompting to each of them the same 
remedy, against the face of all the facts, and the 
clearest charge which judge had ever given, — to the 
surprise of the whole court, townsfolk, strangers, re- 
porters, and all present, — without leaving the box, or 
any manner of consultation whatever, they brought in 
a simultaneous verdict of Not Guilty. 

The judge, who was a shrewd fellow, winked at the 
manifest iniquity of the decision ; and when the court 



A DISSERTATION UPON EOAST PIG. 207 

was dismissed, went privily, and bought up all the pigs 
that could be had for love or money. In a few days 
his Lordship's town-house was observed to be on fire. 
The thing took wing, and now there was nothing to be 
seen but fire in every direction. Fuel and pigs grew 
enormously dear all over the district. The insurance 
offices one and all shut up shop. People built slighter 
and slighter every day, until it was feared that the very 
science of architecture would in no long time be lost to 
the world. Thus this custom of firing houses con- 
tinued, till in process of time, says my manuscript, a 
sage arose, like our Locke, who made a discovery, that 
the flesh of swine, or indeed of any other animal, might 
be cooked (burnt^ as they called it) without the neces- 
sity of consuming a whole house to dress it. Then first 
began the rude form of a gridiron. Roasting by the 
string or spit came in a century or two later ; I forget 
in whose dynasty. By such slow degrees, concludes 
the manuscript, do the most useful, and seemingly the 
most obvious arts make their way among man- 
kind. 

Without placing too implicit faith in the account 
above given, it must be agreed, that if a worthy pre- 
text for so dangerous an experiment as setting houses 
on fire (especially in these days) could be assigned in 
favor of any culinary object, that pretext and excuse 
might be found in roast pig. 

Of all the delicacies in the whole mundus edihilis^ 
I will mamtain it to be the most delicate — princeps 
ohsoniprum. 

I speak not of your grown porkers — things between 
pig and pork — those hobbydehoys — but a young and 
tender suckling — under a moon old — guiltless as yet 



208 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 

of the sty — with no origmal speck of the amor immun- 
ditice, the hereditary failing of the first parent, yet 
manifest — ■ his voice as yet not broken, but something 
between a childish treble and a grumble — the mild 
forerunner, or prceludium of a grunt. 

Se must he roasted. I am not ignorant that our an- 
cestors ate them seethed, or boiled, — but what a sacri- 
fice of the exterior tegument ! 

There is no flavor comparable, I will contend, to 
that of the crisp, tawny, well-watched, not over- 
roasted, crackling^ as it is well called, — the very teeth 
are invited to their share of the pleasure at this banquet 
in overcoming the coy, brittle resistance, — with the ad- 
hesive oleaginous — O call it not fat ! but an indefin- 
able sweetness growing up to it, — the tender blossom- 
ing of fat — fat cropped in the bud — - taken in the 
shoot — in the first innocence — the cream and quintes- 
sence of the child-pig's yet pure food, the lean, no 

lean, but a kind of animal manna, — or, rather, fat and 
lean (if it must be so) so blended and running into 
each other, that both together make but one ambrosian 
result, or common substance. 

Behold him, while he is " doing " — it seemeth rather 
a refreshing warmth, than a scorching heat, that he is 
so passive to. How equably he twirleth round the 
string ! Now he is just done. To see the extreme 
sensibility of that tender age ! he hath wept out his 
pretty eyes — radiant jellies — shooting stars. 

See him in the dish, his second cradle, how meek he 
lieth ! — wouldst thou have had this innocent grow up 
to the grossness and indocility which too often accom- 
pany maturer swinehood ? Ten to one he would have 
proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 209 

animal — wallowing in all manner of filthy conversa- 
tion, — from these sins he is happily snatched away, — 

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, 
Death came with timely care — 

his memory is odoriferous, — no clown curseth, while 
his stomach half rejecteth, the rank bacon, — no coal- 
heaver bolteth him in reeking sausages, — he hath a fair 
sepulchre in the grateful stomach of the judicious epi- 
cure, — and for such a tomb might be content to die. 

He is the best of sapors. Pineapple is great. She 
is indeed almost too transcendent — a delight, if not 
sinful, yet so like to sinning that really a tender con- 
scienced person would do well to pause — too ravishing 
for mortal taste, she woundeth and excoriateth the lips 
that approach her — like lovers' kisses, she biteth — 
she is a pleasure bordering on pain from the fierceness 
and insanity of her relish — but she stoppeth at the 
palate — she meddleth not with the appetite — and the 
coarsest hunger might barter her consistently for a 
mutton chop. 

Pig — let me speak his praise — is no less provoca- 
tive of the appetite, than he is satisfactory to the criti- 
calness of the censorious palate. The strong man may 
batten on him, and the weakling refuseth not his mild 
juices. 

Unlike to mankind's mixed characters, a bundle of 
virtues and vices, inexplicably intertwisted, and not to 
be unravelled without hazard, he is — good throughout. 
No part of him is better or worse than another. He 
helpeth, as far as his little means extend, all around. 
He is the least envious of banquets. He is all neigh- 
bors's fare. 

VOL. III. 14 



210 A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 

I am one of those, who freely and ungrudgingly im- 
part a share of the good things of this life which fall to 
their lot (few as mine are in this kind) to a friend. I 
protest I take as great an interest in my friend's pleas- 
ures, his relishes, and proper satisfactions, as in mine 
own. " Presents," I often say, " endear Absents." 
Hares, pheasants, partridges, snipes, barn-door chickens, 
(those " tame villatic fowl,") capons, plovers, brawn, 
barrels of oysters, I dispense as freely as I receive 
them. I love to taste them, as it were, upon the 
tongue of my friend. But a stop must be put some- 
where. One would not, like Lear, " give everything." 
I make my stand upon pig. Methinks it is an ingrati- 
tude to the Giver of all good flavors, to extra-domicili- 
ate, or send out of the house, slightingly, (under pre- 
text of friendship, or I know not what,) a blessing so 
particularly adapted, predestined, I may say, to my in- 
dividual palate — It argues an insensibility. 

I remember a touch of conscience in this kind at 
school. My good old aunt, who never parted from me 
at the end of a holiday without stuffing a sweetmeat, 
or some nice thing, into my pocket, had dismissed me 
one evening with a smoking plum-cake fresh from the 
oven. In my way to school (it was over London 
bridge) a grayheaded old beggar saluted me (I have 
no doubt, at this time of day, that he was a counter- 
feit). I had no pence to console him with, and in the 
vanity of self-denial, and the very coxcombry of charity, 
schoolboy-like, I made him a present of — the whole 
cake ! I walked on a little, buoyed up, as one is on 
such occasions, with a sweet soothing of self-satisfac- 
tion ; but before I had got to the end of the bridge, my 
better feelings returned, and I burst into tears, think- 



A DISSERTATION UPON ROAST PIG. 211 

ing how ungrateful I had been to my good aunt, to go 
and give her good gift away to a stranger that I had 
never seen before, and who might be a bad man for 
aught I knew ; and then I thought of the pleasure my 
aunt would be taking in thinking that I — 1 myself, 
and not another — would eat her nice cake, — and what 
should I say to her the next time I saw her, — how 
naughty I was to part with her pretty present ! — and 
the odor of that spicy cake came back upon my recol- 
lection, and the pleasure and the curiosity I had taken 
in seeing her make it, and her joy when she sent it to 
the oven, and how disappointed she would feel that I 
had never had a bit of it in my mouth at last, — and I 
blamed my impertinent spirit of alms-giving, and out- 
of-place hypocrisy of goodness ; and above all I wished 
never to see the face again of that insidious, good-for- 
nothing, old gray impostor. 

Our ancestors were nice in their method of sacri- 
ficing these tender victims. We read of pigs whipt to 
death with something of a shock, as we hear of any 
other obsolete custom. The age of discipline is gone 
by, or it would be curious to inquire (in a philosophical 
light merely) what effect this process might have tow- 
ards intenerating and dulcifying a substance, natu- 
rally so mild and dulcet as the flesh of young pigs. It 
looks like refining a violet. Yet we should be cautious, 
while we condemn the inhumanity, how we censure the 
wisdom of the practice. It might impart a gusto. 

I remember an hypothesis, argued upon by the 
young students, when I was at St. Omer's, and main- 
tained with much learning and pleasantry on both 
sides, " Whether, supposing that the flavor of a pig 
who obtained his death by whipping Qper flagellationem 



212 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF 

extremarn), superadded a pleasure upon the palate of a 
man more intense than any possible suffering we can 
conceive in the animal, is man justified in using that 
method of putting the animal to death ? " I forget 
the decision. 

His sauce should be considered. Decidedly, a few 
bread-crumbs, done up with his liver and brains, and a 
dash of mild sage. But banish, dear Mrs. Cook, I 
beseech you, the whole onion tribe. Barbecue your 
whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff 
them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic; 
you cannot poison them, or make them stronger than 
they are, — but consider, he is a weakling — a flower. 



A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF THE BEHAVIOR 
OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 

As a single man, I have spent a good deal of my 
time in noting down the infirmities of Married People, 
to console myself for those superior pleasures, which 
they tell me I have lost by remaining as I am. 

I cannot say that the quarrels of men and theii° 
wives ever made any great impression upon me, or had 
much tendency to strengthen me in those anti-social 
resolutions, which I took up long ago upon more sub- 
stantial considerations. What oftenest offends me at 
the houses of married persons where I visit, is an error 
of quite a diflPerent description ; — it is that they are too 
loving. 



THE BEHAVIOR OF MAERIED PEOPLE. 213 

Not too loving neither ; that does not explain my 
meaning. Besides, why should that offend me ? The 
very act of separating themselves from the rest of the 
world, to have the fuller enjoyment of each other's 
society, implies that they prefer one another to all the 
world. 

But what I complain of is, that they carry this pref- 
erence so undisguisedly, they perk it up in the faces 
of us single people so shamelessly, you cannot be in 
their company a moment without being made to feel, 
by some indirect hint or open avowal, that you are not 
the object of this preference. Now there are some 
things which give no offence, while implied or taken for 
granted merely ; but expressed, there is much offence 
in them. If a man were to accost the first homely- 
featured, or plain-dressed young woman of his acquaint- 
ance, and tell her bluntly, that she was not handsome 
or rich enough for him, and he could not marry her, 
he would deserve to be kicked for his ill manners ; yet 
no less is implied in the fact, that having access and op- 
portunity of putting the question to her, he has never 
yet thought fit to do it. The young woman under- 
stands this as clearly as if it were put into words ; but 
no reasonable young woman would think of making 
this the ground of a quarrel. Just as little right have 
a married couple to tell me by speeches, and looks that 
are scarce less plain than speeches, that I am not the 
happy man, — the lady's choice. It is enough that I 
know I am not ; I do not want this perpetual remind- 
ing. 

The display of superior knowledge or riches may be 
made sufiiciently mortifying ; but these admit of a 
palliative. The knowledge which is brought out to 



214 A BACHELOE'S COMPLAINT OF 

insult me, may accidentally improve me ; and in the 
rich man's houses and pictures, — his parks and gar- 
dens, I have a temporary usufruct at least. But the 
display of married happiness has none of these pallia- 
tives ; it is throughout pure, unrecompensed, unquali- 
fied insult. 

Marriage by its best title is a monopoly, and not of 
the least invidious sort. It is the cunning of most pos- 
sessors of any exclusive privilege to keep their advan- 
tage as much out of sight as possible, that their less 
favored neighbors, seeing little of the benefit, may the 
less be disposed to question the right. But these mar- 
ried monopolists thrust the most obnoxious part of their 
patent into our faces. 

Nothing is to me more distastefiil than that entire 
complacency and satisfaction which beam in the coun- 
tenances of a new-married couple, — in that of the 
lady particularly ; it tells you, that her lot is disposed 
of in this world ; that you can have no hopes of her. 
It is true, I have none ; nor wishes either, perhaps ; but 
this is one of those truths which ought, as I said before, 
to be taken for granted, not expressed. 

The excessive airs which those people give them- 
selves, founded on the ignorance of us unmarried 
people, would be more offensive if they were less irra- 
tional. We will allow them to understand the mys- 
teries belonging to their own craft better than we, who 
have not had the happiness to be made free of the com- 
pany ; but their arrogance is not content within these 
limits. If a single person presume to ofier his opinion 
in their presence, though upon the most indifferent 
subject, he is immediately silenced as an incompetent 
person. Nay, a young married lady of my acquaint- 



THE BEHAVIOR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 215 

ance, who, the best of the jest was, had not changed 
her condition above a fortnight before, in a question on 
which I had the misfortune to differ from her, respect- 
ing the properest mode of breeding oysters for the 
London market, had the assurance to ask with a sneer, 
how such an old bachelor as I could pretend to know 
anything about such matters ! 

But what I have spoken of hitherto is nothing to 
the airs which these creatures give themselves when 
they come, as they generally do, to have children. 
When I consider how little of a rarity children are, — 
that every street and blind alley swarms with them, — 
that the poorest people commonly have them in most 
abundance, — that there are few marriages that are not 
blest with at least one of these bargains, — how often 
they turn out ill, and defeat the fond hopes of their 
parents, taking to vicious courses, which end in pov- 
erty, disgrace, the gallows, &c., — I cannot for my life 
tell what cause for pride there can possibly be in hav- 
ing them. If they were young phoenixes, indeed, that 
were born but one in a year, there might be a pretext. 
But when they are so common 

I do not advert to the insolent merit which they 
assume with their husbands on these occasions. Let 
them look to that. But why we, who are not their 
natural-born subjects, should be expected to bring our 
spices, myrrh, and incense, — our tribute and homage 
of admiration, — I do not see. 

" Like as the arrows in the hand of the giant even 
so are the young children;" sb says the excellent office 
in our Prayer-Book appointed for the churching of 
women. " Happy is the man that hath his quiver fiill 
of them ; " so say I ; but then don't let him dis- 



216 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF 

charge liis quiver upon us tliat are weaponless ; — let 
them be arrows, but not to gall and stick us. I have 
generally observed that these arrows are double-headed : 
they have two forks, to be sure to hit with one or the 
other. As for instance, where you come into a house 
which is full of children, if you happen to take no 
notice of them, (you are thinking of something else, 
perhaps, and turn a deaf ear to their innocent caresses,) 
you are set down as untractable, morose, a hater of 
children. On the other hand, if you find them more 
than usually engaging, — if you are "taken with their 
pretty manners, and set about in earnest to romp and 
play with them, some pretext or other is sure to be 
found for sending them out of the room ; they are too 

noisy or boisterous, or Mr. does not like children. 

With one or other of these forks the arrow is sui^e to 
hit you. 

I could forgive their jealousy, and dispense with toy- 
ing with their brats, if it gives them any pain ; but I 
think it unreasonable to be called upon to love them, 
where I see no occasion, — to love a whole family, 
perhaps, eight, nine, or ten, indiscriminately, — to love 
all the pretty dears, because children are so engaging ! 

I know there is a proverb, " Love me, love my 
dog ; " that is not always so very practicable, particu- 
larly if the dog be set upon you to tease you or snap at 
you in sport. But a dog, or a lesser thing, — any in- 
animate substance, as a keepsake, a watch or a ring, a 
tree, or the place where we last parted when my friend 
went away upon a long absence, I can make shift to 
love, because I love him, and anything that reminds me 
of him ; provided it be in its nature indifferent, and apt 
to receive whatever hue fancy can give it. But chil- 



THE BEHAVIOR OF MAREIED PEOPLE. 217 

dren have a real character, and an essential being of 
themselves ; they are amiable or unamiable per 8e ; I 
must love or hate them as I see cause for either in their 
qualities. A child's nature is too serious a thing to 
admit of its being regarded as a mere appendage to 
another being, and to be loved or hated accordingly; 
they stand with me upon their own stock, as much as 
men and women do. Oh ! but you will say, sure it is 
an attractive age, — there is something in the tender 
years of infancy that of itself charms us ? That is the 
very reason why I am more nice about them. I know 
that a sweet child is the sweetest thing in nature, not 
even excepting the delicate creatures which bear them ; 
but the prettier the kind of a thing is, the more desir- 
able it is that it should be pretty of its kind. One 
daisy differs not much from another in glory ; but a 
violet should look and smell the daintiest. I was 
always rather squeamish in my women and children. 
But this is not the worst ; one must be admitted 
into their familiarity at least, before they can complain 
of inattention. It imphes visits, and some kind of in- 
tercourse. But if the husband be a man with whom 
you have lived on a friendly footing before marriage — 
if you did not come in on the wife's side — if you did 
not sneak into the house in her train, but were an old 
friend in fast habits of intimacy before their courtship 
was so much as thought on, — look about you — your 
tenure is precarious — before a twelvemonth shall roll 
over your head, you shall find your old friend gradually 
grow cool and altered towards you, and at last seek op- 
portunities of breaking with you. I have scarce a 
married friend of my acquaintance, upon whose firm 
faith I can rely, whose friendship did not commence 



218 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT OF 

after 'the period of Ms marriage. With some limita- 
tions, , they can endure that ; but that the good man 
should have dared to enter into a solemn league of 
friendship in which they were not consulted, though it 
happened before they knew him, — before they that are 
now man and wife ever met, — this is intolerable to 
them. Every long friendship, every old authentic inti- 
macy, must be brought into their office to be new 
stamped with their currency, as a sovereign prince calls 
in the good old money that was coined in some reign 
before he was born or thought of, to be new marked 
and minted with the stamp of his authority, before he 
will let it pass current in the world. You may guess 
what luck generally befalls such a rusty piece of metal 
as I am in these tiew mintings. 

Innumerable are the ways which they take to insult 
and worm you out of their husband's confidence. 
Laughing at all you say with a kind of wonder, as 
if you were a queer kind of fellow that said good 
things, hut an oddity., is one of the ways ; — they have 
a particular kind of stare for the purpose ; — till at last 
the husband, who used to defer to your judgment, and 
would pass over some excrescences of understanding 
and manner for the sake of a general vein of obser- 
vation (not quite vulgar) which he perceived in }0u, 
begins to suspect whether you are not altogether a 
humorist, — a fellow well enough to have consorted 
with in his bachelor days, but not quite so proper to be 
introduced to ladies. This may be called the staring 
way ; and is that which has oftenest been put in prac- 
tice ao-ainst me. 

Then there is the exaggerating way, or the way of 
irony ; that is, where they find you an object of espe- 



THE BEHAVIOR OF MARRIED PEOPLE. 219 

cial regard with their husband, who is not so easily to 
be shaken from the lasting attachment founded on 
esteem which he has conceived towards you, by never 
quahfied exaggerations to cry up all that you say or do, 
till the good man, who understands well enough that it 
is all done in compliment to him, grows weary of the 
debt of gratitude which is due to so much candor, and 
by relaxing a little on his part, and taking down a peg 
or two in his enthusiasm, sinks at length to the kindly 
level of moderate esteem — that " decent affection and 
complacent kindness " towards you, where she herself 
can join in sympathy with him without much stretch 
and violence to her sincerity. 

Another way (for the ways they have to accomphsh 
so desirable a purpose are infinite) is, with a kind of 
innocent simplicity, continually to mistake what it was 
which first made their husband fond of you. If an 
esteem for something excellent in your moral character 
was that which riveted the chain which she is to break, 
upon any imaginary discovery of a want of poignancy 
in your conversation, she will cry, " I thought, my 

dear, you described your friend, Mr. , as a great 

wit? " If, on the other hand, it was for some supposed 
charm in your conversation that he first grew to like 
you, and was content for this to overlook some trifling 
irregularities in your moral deportment, upon the first 
notice of any of these she as readily exclaims, " This, 

my dear, is your good Mr. 1 " One good lady 

whom I took the liberty of expostulating with for not 
showing me quite so much respect as I thought due to 
her husband's old friend, had the candor to confess to 

me that she had often heard Mr. — speak of me 

before marriage, and that she had conceived a great 



220 A BACHELOR'S COMPLAINT, ETC. 

desire to be acquainted with me, but that the sight of 
me liad very much disappointed her expectations ; for 
from her husband's representations of me, she had 
formed a notion that she was to see a fine, tall, officer- 
like looking man, (I use her very words,) the very 
reverse of which proved to be the truth. This was 
candid ; and I had the civility not to ask her in return, 
how she came to pitch upon a standard of personal 
accomplishments for her husband's friends which dif- 
fered so much from his own ; for my friend's dimen- 
sions as near as possible approximate to mine ; he stand- 
ing five feet five in his shoes, in which I have the 
advantage of him by about half an inch ; and he no 
more than myself exhibiting any indications of a 
martial character in his air or countenance. 

These are some of the mortifications which I have 
encountered in the absurd attempt to visit at their 
houses. To enumerate them all would be a vain en- 
deavor ; I shall therefore just glance at the very com- 
mon impropriety of which married ladies are guilty, — 
of treating us as if we were their husbands, and vice 
versd. I mean, wdien they use us with familiarity, and 
their husbands with ceremony. Testacea, for instance, 
kept me the other night two or three hours beyond my 
usual time of supping, while she was fretting because 

Mr. did not come home, till the oysters were 

all spoiled, rather than she would be guilty of the im- 
politeness of touching one in his absence. This was 
reversing the point of good manners ; for ceremony is 
an invention to take ofp the uneasy feeling which we 
derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of 
love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other 
person is. It endeavors to make up, by superior 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 221 

attentions in little points, for that invidious preference 
which it is forced to denj in the greater. ' Had Tes- 
tacea kept the oysters back for me, and withstood her 
husband's importunities to go to supper, she would have 
acted according to the strict rules of propriety. I know 
no ceremony that ladies are bound to observe to their 
husbands, beyond the point of a modest behavior and 
decorum ; therefore I must protest against the vicarious 
gluttony of Oerasia^ who at her own table sent away a 
dish of Morellas, which I was applying to with great 
good-will, to her husband at the other end of the table, 
and recommended a plate of less extraordinary goose- 
berries to my unwedded palate in their stead. Neither 

can I excuse the wanton affront of 

But I am weary of stringing up all my married ac- 
quaintance by Roman denominations. Let them amend 
and change their manners, or I promise to record the 
full-length English of their names, to the terror of all 
such desperate offenders in future. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS, 

The casual sight of an old playbill, which I picked 
up the other day — I know not by what chance it was 
preserved so long — ■ tempts me to call to mind a few of 
the players, who make the principal figure in it. It 
presents the cast of parts in the Twelfth Night, at the 
old Drury Lane Theatre, two-and-thirty years ago. 
There is something very touching in these old remem- 



222 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTOES. 

brances. They make us think how we once used to 
read a playbill, — not, as now peradventure, singling 
out a favorite performer, and casting a negligent eye 
over the rest ; but spelling out every name, down to 
the very mutes and servants of the scene ; — when it 
was a matter of no small moment to us whether Whit- 
field, or Packer, took the })art of Fabian ; when Ben- 
son, and Burton, and Phillimore — names of small 
account — had an importance, beyond what we can 
be content to attribute now to the time's best actors. 
" Orsino, by Mr. Barrymore. " What a full Shak- 
spearian sound it carries ! how fresh to memory arise 
the image, and the manner of the gentle actor ! 

Those who have only seen Mrs. Jordan within the 
last ten or fifteen years, can have no adequate notion of 
her performance of such parts as Ophelia ; Helena, in 
All's Well that Ends Well ; and Viola in this play. 
Her voice had latterly acquired a coarseness, which 
suited well enough with her Nells and Hoydens, but in 
those days it sank, with her steady melting eye, into 
the heart. Her joyous parts — in which her memory 
now chiefly lives — in her youth were outdone by her 
plaintive ones. There is no giving an account how 
she delivered the disguised story of her love for Orsino. 
It was no set speech, that she had foreseen, so as to 
weave it into an harmonious period, line necessarily 
following line, to make up the music, — yet I have 
heard it so spoken, or rather read, not without its grace 
and beauty, — but, when she had declared her sister's 
history to be a " blank," and that she " never told her 
love," there was a pause, as if the story had ended, — 
and then the image of the " worm in the bud," came 
up as a new suggestion, — and the heightened image of 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTOES. 223 

" Patience " still followed after that, as by some grow- 
ing (and not mechanical) process, thought springing 
up after thought, I would almost say, as they were 
watered by her tears. So in those fine lines — 

Write loyal cantos of contemned love — 
Hollow your name to the reverberate hills — 

there was no preparation made in the foregoing image 
for that which was to follow. She used no rhetoric in 
her passion ; or it was nature's own rhetoric, most legit- 
imate then, when it seemed altogether without rule or 
law. 

Mrs. Powel (now Mrs. Renard), then in the pride 
of her beauty, made an admirable Olivia. She was 
particularly excellent in her unbending scenes in con- 
versation with the Clown. I have seen some Olivias 
— and those very sensible actresses too — who in these 
interlocutions have seemed to set their wits at the 
jester, and to vie conceits with him in downright 
emulation. But she used him for her sport, like what 
he was, to trifle a leisure sentence or two with, and 
then to be dismissed, and she to be the Great Lady 
still. She touched the imperious fantastic humor of 
the character with nicety. Her fine spacious person 
filled the scene. 

The part of Malvolio has, in my judgment, been so 
often misunderstood, and the general merits of the 
actor, wdio then played it, so unduly appreciated, that 
I shall hope for pardon, if I am a little prolix upon 
these points. 

Of all the actors who flourished in my time, — a 
melancholy phrase if taken aright, reader, — Bensley 
had most of the swell of soul, was greatest in the 



224 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 

delivery of heroic conceptions, tlie emotions consequent 
upon the presentment of a great idea to the fancy. He 
had the true poetical enthusiasm — the rarest faculty 
among players. None that I remember possessed even 
a portion of that fine madness which he threw out in 
Hotspur's famous rant about glory, or the transports of 
the Venetian incendiary at the vision of the fired city. 
His voice had the dissonance, and at times the inspirit- 
ing effect, of the trumpet. His gait was uncouth and 
stiff, but no way embarrassed by affectation ; and 
the thorough-bred gentleman was uppermost in every 
movement. He seized the moment of passion with 
greatest truth ; like a faithful clock, never striking be- 
fore the time ; never anticipating or leading you to 
anticipate. He was totally destitute of trick and arti- 
fice. He seemed come upon the stage to do the poet's 
message simply, and he did it with as genuine fidelity 
as the nuncios in Homer deliver the errands of the 
gods. He let the passion or the sentiment do its own 
work without prop or bolstering. He would have 
scorned to mountebank it ; and betrayed none of that 
cleverness which is the bane of serious acting. For this 
reason, his lago was the only endurable one which I 
remember to have seen. No spectator from his action 
could divine more of his artifice than Othello was sup- 
posed to do. His confessions in soliloquy alone put you 
in possession of the mystery. There were no by-inti- 
mations to make the audience fancy their own discern- 
ment so much greater than that of the Moor — who 
commonly stands like a great helpless mark set up for 
mine Ancient, and a quantity of barren spectators, to 
shoot their bolts at. The lago of Bensley did not go 
to work so grossly. There was a triumphant tone 



ON SOME OF TEE OLD ACTORS. 225 

about the character, natural to a general consciousness 
of power ; but none of that petty vanity which chuckles 
and cannot contain itself upon any little successful 
stroke of its knavery — as is common with your small 
villains, and green probationers in mischief. It did not 
clap or crow before its time. It was not a man setting 
his wits at a child, and winking all the while at other 
children who are mightily pleased at being let into the 
secret; but a consummate villain entrapping a noble 
nature into toils, against which no discernment was 
available, where the manner was as fathomless as the 
purpose seemed dark, and without motive. The part 
of Malvolio, in the Twelfth Night, was performed by 
Bensley with a richness and a dignity, of which (to 
judge from some recent castings of that character) the 
very tradition must be worn out from the stage. No 
manager in those days would have dreamed of giving 
it to Mr. Baddeley, or Mr. Parsons ; when Bensley 
was occasionally absent from the theatre, John Kemble 
thought it no derogation to succeed to the part. Mal- 
volio is not essentially ludicrous. He becomes comic 
but by accident. He is cold, austere, repelling ; but 
dignified, consistent, and, for what appears, rather of an 
over-stretched morality. Maria describes him as a 
sort of Pmitan ; and he might have worn his gold 
chain with honor in one of our old round head families, 
in the service of a Lambert or a Lady Fairfax. But 
his morality and his manners are misplaced in Illyria. 
He is opposed to the proper levities of the piece, and 
falls in the unequal contest. Still his pride, or his 
gravity (call it which you will), is inherent, and 
native to the man, not mock or affected, which latter 
only are the fit objects to excite laughter. His quality 

VOT^. III. 15 



226 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTOES. 

is at the best unlovely, but neither buffoon nor con- 
temptible. His bearing is lofty, a little above his 
station, but probably not much above his deserts. We 
see no reason why he should not have been brave, 
honorable, accomplished. His careless committal of the 
ring to the ground (which he was commissioned to 
restore to Cesario), bespeaks a generosity of birth and 
feeling. His dialect on all occasions is that of a gentle- 
man, and a man of education. We must not confound 
him with the eternal old, low steward of comedy. He 
is master of the household to a great princess ; a dignity 
probably conferred upon him for other respects than age 
or length of service. Olivia, at the first indication of 
his supposed madness, declares that she " would not 
have him miscarry for half of her dowry." Does this 
look as if the character was meant to appear little or 
insignificant ? Once, indeed, she accuses him to his 
face — of what ? — of being " sick of self-love," — but 
with a gentleness and considerateness which could not 
have been, if she had not thought that this particular 
infirmity shaded some virtues. His rebuke to the 
knight, and his sottish revellers, is sensible and spir- 
ited ; and when we take into consideration the unpro- 
tected condition of his mistress, and the strict regard 
with which her state of real or dissembled mourning 
would draw the eyes of the world upon her house 
aflPairs, Malvolio might feel the honor of the family in 
some sort in his keeping ; as it appears not that Olivia 
had any more brothers, or kinsmen, to look to it, — for 
Sir Toby had dropped all such nice respects at the 
buttery-hatch. That Malvolio was meant to be repre- 
sented as possessing estimable qualities, the expression 
of the Duke, in his anxiety to have him reconciled, 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTOES. 227 

almost infers : " Pursue him, and entreat him to a 
peace." Even in his abused state of chains and dark- 
ness, a sort of greatness seems never to desert him. 
He argues highly and well with the supposed Sir 
Topas, and philosophizes gallantly upon his straw.* 
There must have been some shadow of worth about 
the man ; he must have been something more than a 
mere vapor — a thing of straw, or Jack in office — 
before Fabian and Maria could have ventured sending 
him upon a courting errand to Olivia. There was 
some consonancy (as he would say) in the undertak- 
ing, or the jest would have been too bold even for that 
house of misrule. 

Bensley, accordingly, threw over the part an air of 
Spanish loftiness. He looked, spake, and moved like 
an old Castilian. He was starch, spruce, opinionated, 
but his superstructure of pride seemed bottomed upon 
a sense of worth. There was something in it beyond 
the coxcomb. It was big and swelling, but you could 
not be sure that it was hollow. You might wish to see 
it taken down, but you felt that it was upon an eleva- 
tion. He was magnificent from the outset ; but when 
the decent sobrieties of the character began to give way, 
and the poison of self-love, in his conceit of the Count- 
ess's affection, gradually to work, you would have 
thought that the hero of La Mancha in person stood 
before you. How he went smiling to himself! with 
what ineffable carelessness would he twirl his gold 
chain ! what a dream it was ! you were infected with 
the illusion, and did not wish that it should be re- 

* Clown. What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl ? 
Mai. That the soul of our grandam might haply inhabit a bird. 
Gown. What thinkest thou of his opinion ? 
Mai. I thinji nobly of the soul, and no way appx-ove of his opinion. 



228 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 

moved ! you had no room for laughter ! if an unseason- 
able reflection of morality obtruded itself, it was a deep 
sense of the pitiable infirmity of man's nature, that can 
lay him open to such frenzies, — but in truth you rather 
admired than pitied the lunacy while it lasted, — you 
felt that an hour of such mistake was worth an age 
with the eyes open. Who would not wish to live but 
for a day in the conceit of such a lady's love as Olivia ? 
Why, the Duke w^ould have given his principality but 
for a quarter of a minute, sleeping or waking, to have 
been so deluded. The man seemed to tread upon air, 
to taste manna, to walk with his head in the clouds, to 
mate Hyperion. O ! shake not the castles of his pride, 

— endure yet for a season, bright moments of confi- 
dence, — " stand still, ye watches of the element," that 
Malvolio may be still in fancy fair Olivia's lord ! — but 
fate and retribution say no ! — I hear the mischievous 
titter of Maria, — the witty taunts of Sir Toby — the 
still more insupportable triumph of the foolish knight 

— the counterfeit Sir Topas is unmasked — and " thus 
the whirligig of time," as the true clown hath it, 
" brings in his revenges." I confess that I never saw 
the catastrophe of this character, while Bensley played 
it, without a kind of tragic interest. There was good 
foolery too. Few now remember Dodd. What an 
Aguecheek the stage lost in him ! Lovegrove, who 
came nearest to the old actors, revived the character 
some few seasons ago, and made it sufiiciently gro- 
tesque ; but Dodd was it^ as it came out of nature's 
hands. It might be said to remain in puris naturalihus. 
In expressing slowness of apprehension, this actor sur- 
passed all others. You could see the first dawn of an 
idea stealing slowly over his countenance, climbing up 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 229 

bj little and little, with a painful process, till it cleared 
ap at last to the fulness of a twilight conception — its 
highest meridian. He seemed to keep back his intel- 
lect, as some have had the power to retard their pulsa- 
tion. The balloon takes less time in filling, than it took 
to cover the expansion of his broad moony face over all 
its quarters with expression. A glimmer qf understand- 
ing would appear in a corner of his eye, and for lack of 
fuel go out again. A part of his forehead would catch 
a little intelligence, and be a long time in communicat- 
ing it to the remainder. 

I am ill at dates, but I think it is now better than 
five-and-twenty years ago, that walking in the gardens 
of Gray's Inn — they were then far finer than they are 
now — the accursed Verulam Buildings had not en- 
croached upon all the east side of them, cutting out 
delicate green crankles, and shouldering away one of 
two of the stately alcoves of the terrace, — the survivor 
stands gaping and relationless as if it remembered its 
brother, — they are still the best gardens of any of the 
Inns of Court, my beloved Temple not forgotten, — 
have the gravest character, their aspect being alto- 
gether reverend and law-breathing, — Bacon has left 

the impress of his foot upon their gravel walks ; 

taking my afternoon solace on a summer day upon the 
aforesaid terrace, a comely, sad personage came towards 
me, whom, from his grave air and deportment, I judged 
to be one of the old Benchers of the Inn. He had a 
serious thoughtful forehead, and seemed to be in medi- 
tations of mortality. As I have an instinctive awe of 
old Benchers, I was passing him with that sort of sub- 
indicative token of respect which one is apt to demon- 
strate towards a venerable stranger, and which rather 



230 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 

denotes an inclination to greet liim, than any positive 
motion of the body to that effect, — a species of humil- 
ity and will-worship which I observe, nine times out of 
ten, rather puzzles than pleases the person it is offered 
to — when the face turning fall upon me, strangely 
identified itself with that of Dodd. Upon close inspec- 
tion I was not mistaken. But could this sad, thought- 
ful countenance be the same vacant face of folly which 
I had hailed so often under circumstances of gayety; 
which I had never seen without a smile, or recognized 
but as the usher of mirth ; that looked out so formally 
flat in Foppington, so frothily pert in Tattle, so impo- 
tently busy in Backbite ; so blankly divested of all 
meaning, or resolutely expressive of none, in Acres, in 
Fribble, and a thousand agreeable impertinences ? Was 
this the face, — full of thought and carefulness, — that 
had so often divested itself at will of every trace of 
either to give me diversion, to clear my cloudy face for 
two or three hours at least of its furrows ? Was this 
the face — manly, sober, intelligent — which I had so 
often despised, made mocks at, made merry with ? The 
remembrance of the freedoms which I had taken with 
it came upon me with a reproach of insult. I could 
have asked it pardon. I thought it looked upon me 
with a sense of injury. There is something strange as 
well as sad in seeing actors — your pleasant fellows 
particularly — subjected to and suffering the common 
lot ; their fortunes, their casualties, their deaths, seem 
to belong to the scene, their actions to be amenable to 
poetic justice only. We can hardly connect them with 
more awful responsibilities. The death of this fine 
actor took place shortly after this meeting. He had 
quitted the stage some months ; and, as I learned 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 231 

afterwards, had been in the habit of resorting daily to 
these gardens almost to the day of his decease. In 
these serious walks probably he was divesting himself 
of many scenic and some real vanities, — weaning him- 
self from the frivolities of the lesser and the greater 
theatre, — doing gentle penance for a life of no very 
reprehensible fooleries, — taking off by degrees the 
buffoon mask, which he might feel he had worn too 
long, — and rehearsing for a more solemn cast of part. 
Dying, he "put on the weeds of Dominic." * 

If few can remember Dodd, many yet living will not 
easily forget the pleasant creature, who in those days 
enacted the part of the Clown to Dodd's Sir Andrew. 
Richard, or rather Dicky Suett, — for so in his lifetime 
he delighted to be called, and time hath ratified the 
appellation, — lieth buried on the north side of the 
cemetery of Holy Paul, to wdiose service his nonage 
and tender years were dedicated. There are who do 
yet remember him at that period, — his pipe clear and 
harmonious. He would often speak of his chorister 
days, when he was " cherub Dicky." 

What clipped his wings, or made it expedient that 
he should exchange the holy for the profane state; 
whether he had lost his good voice (his best recom- 
mendation to that office), like Sir John, " with lialloo- 

* Dodd was a man of reading, and left at his death a choice collection 
of old English literature. I should judge him to have been a man of wit. 
I know one instance of an impromptu which no length of study could 
have bettered. My merry friend, Jem White, had seen him one evening 
in Aguecheek, and recognizing Dodd the next day in Fleet Street, was 
irresistibly impelled to take off his hat and salute him as the identical 
Knight of the preceding evening with a " Save you. Sir Andrew.'" Dodd, 
not at all disconcerted at this unusual address from a stranger, with a 
courteous half-rebuking wave of the hand, put him off with an " Away, 
Fool'" 



232 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 

ing and singing of anthems ; " or whether he was 
adjudged to lack something, even in those early years, 
of the gravity indispensable to an occupation which 
professeth to " commerce with the skies, " — I could 
never rightly learn ; but we find him, after the proba- 
tion of a twelvemonth or so, reverting to a secular con- 
dition, and become one of us. 

I think he was not altogether of that timber out of 
which cathedral seats and sounding-boards are hewed. 
But if a glad heart — kind, and therefore glad — be 
any part of sanctity, then might the robe of Motley, 
with which he invested himself with so much humility 
after his deprivation, and which he wore so long with 
so much blameless satisfaction to himself and to the 
public, be accepted for a surplice, — ■■ his white stole and 
albe. 

The first fruits of his secularization was an engage- 
ment upon the boards of Old Drury, at which theatre 
he commenced, as I have been told, with adopting the 
manner of Parsons in old men's characters. At the 
period in which most of us knew him, he was no more 
an imitator than he was in any true sense himself 
imitable. 

He was the Robin Goodfellow of the stage. He 
came in to trouble all things with a welcome perplexity, 
himself no whit troubled for the matter. He was 
known, like Puck, by his note, — JIa ! Ha ! JSa ! — 
sometimes deepening to So ! Ho ! Ho I with an 
irresistible accession, derived, perhaps, remotely from 
his ecclesiastical education, foreign to his prototype of, 
— La ! Thousands of hearts yet respond to the 
chuckling La! of Dicky Suett, brought back to 
their remembrance by the faithful transcript of his friend 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTOES. 233 

Mathews's mimicry. The " force of nature could no 
forther go." He drolled upon the stock of these two 
syllables richer than the cuckoo. 

Car^, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in 
his composition. Had he had but two grains (nay, 
half a grain) of it, he could never have supported him- 
self upon those two spider's strings, which served him 
(in the latter part of his unmixed existence) as legs. 
A doubt or a scruple must have made him totter, a 
sigh have puffed him down ; the weight of a frown 
had staggered him, a wrinkle made him lose his bal- 
ance. But. on he went, scrambling upon those airy 
stilts of his, with Robin Goodfellow, " thorough brake, 
thorough briar," reckless of a scratched face or a torn 
doublet. 

Shakspeare foresaw him, when he framed his fools 
and jesters. They have all the true Suett stamp, a 
loose and shambling gait, a slippery tongue, this last 
the ready midwife to a without-pain-delivered jest ; in 
words, light as air, venting truths deep as the centre ; 
with idlest rhymes tagging conceit when busiest, sing- 
ing with Lear in the tempest, or Sir Toby at the but- 
tery-hatch. 

Jack Bannister and he had the fortune to be more of 
personal favorites with the town than any actors before 
or after. The diflFerence, I take it, was this : — Jack 
was more beloved for his sweet, good-natured, moral 
pretensions. Dicky was more liked for his sweet, good- 
natured, no pretensions at all. Your whole conscience 
stirred with Bannister's performance of Walter in the 
Children in the Wood, — but Dicky seemed like a 
thing, as Shakspeare says of Love, too young to know 
what conscience is. He put us into Vesta's days. 



234 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 

Evil fled before him, — not as from Jack, as from an 
antagonist, — but because it could not touch him, any 
more than a cannon-ball a fly. He was delivered 
from the burden of that death ; and, when death came 
himself, not in metaphor, to fetch Dicky, it is recorded 
of him by Robert Palmer, who kindly watched his exit, 
that he received the last stroke, neither varying his 
accustomed tranquillity, nor tune, with the simple ex- 
clamation, worthy to have been recorded in his epitaph 
— OLal OLa! Bobby! 

The elder Palmer (of stage-treading celebrity) com- 
monly played Sir Toby in those days ; but there is a 
solidity of wit in the jests of that half-FalstaflF which he 
did not quite fill out. He was as much too showy as 
Moody (who sometimes took the part) was dry and 
sottish. In sock or buskin there was an air of swag- 
gering gentility about Jack Palmer. He was a gentle- 
man with a slight infusion of the footman. His brother 
Bob (of recenter memory), who was his shadow in 
everything while he lived, and dwindled into less than 
a shadow afterwards, — was a gentleman with a little 
stronger infusion of the latter ingredient ; that was all. 
It is amazino; how a little of the more or less makes a 
difference in these things. When you saw Bobby in the 
Duke's Servant,* you said, " What a pity such a pretty 
fellow was only a servant ! " When you saw Jack 
figuring in Captain Absolute, you thought you could 
trace his promotion to some lady of quality who fancied 
the handsome fellow in his topknot, and had bought 
him a commission. Therefore Jack in Dick Amlet was 
insuperable. 

Jack had two voices, both plausible, hypocritical, 

* High Life Below Stairs. 



ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 235 

and insinuating; but his secondary or supplemental 
voice still more decisively histrionic than his common 
one. It was reserved for the spectator ; and the drmvr- 
Otis personoe were supposed to know nothing at all 
about it. The lies of Young Wilding, and the senti- 
ments in Joseph Surface, were thus marked out in a 
sort of italics to the audience. This secret correspond- 
ence with the company before the curtain (which is the 
bane and death of tragedy) has an extremely happy 
effect in some kinds of comedy, in the more highly 
artificial comedy of Congreve or of Sheridan espec- 
ially, where the absolute sense of reality (so indispen- 
sable to scenes of interest) is not required, or would 
rather interfere to diminish your pleasure. The fact is, 
you do not believe in such characters as Surface, — the 
villain of artificial comedy, — even while you read or 
see them. If you did, they would shock and not divert 
you. When Ben, in Love for Love, returns from sea, 
the following exquisite dialogue occurs at his first meet- 
ing with his father : — 

Sir Sampson. Thou hast been many a weary league, Ben, since I saw 
thee. 

Ben. Ey, ey, been! Been far enough, an' that be all. — Well, father, 
and how do all at home? how does brother Dick, and brother Val? 

Sir Sampson. Dick ! body o' me, Dick has been dead these two years. 
I writ you word when you were at Leghorn. 

Ben. Mess, that's true; Marry, I had forgot. Dick 's dead, as you say, 
— well, and how ? — I have a many questions to ask you. 

Here is an instance of insensibility which in real life 
would be revolting, or rather in real life could not have 
coexisted with the warm-hearted temperament of the 
character. But when you read it in the spirit with 
which such playful selections and specious combinations 
rather than strict metaphrases of nature should be taken, 



236 ON SOME OF THE OLD ACTORS. 

or when you saw Bannister play it, it neither did, nor 
does, wound the moral sense at all. For what is Ben 
— the pleasant sailor which Bannister gives us — but a 
piece of satire, — a creation of Congreve's fancy, — a 
dreamy combination of all the accidents of a sailor's 
character, — his contempt of money, — his credulity 
to women, — with that necessary estrangement from 
home which it is just within the verge. of credibility to 
suppose might produce such an hallucination as is here 
described. We never think the worse of Ben for it, or 
feel it as a stain upon his character. But when an 
actor comes, and instead of the delightful phantom — 
the creature dear to half-belief — which Bannister ex- 
hibited, — displays before our eyes a downright concre- 
tion of a Wapping sailor — a jolly warm-hearted Jack 
Tar — and nothing else — when, instead of investing it 
with a delicious confiisedness of the head, and a veer- 
ing undirected goodness of purpose, — he gives to it a 
downright daylight understanding, and a full conscious- 
ness of its actions ; thrusting forward the sensibilities 
of the character with a pretence as if it stood upon 
nothing else, and was to be judged by them alone,' — 
we feel the discord of the thing ; the scene is dis- 
turbed ; a real man has got in among the dramatis 
'personce^ and puts them out. We want the sailor 
turned out. We feel that his true place is not behind 
the curtain, but in the first or second gallery. 



THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 237 



ON THE AETIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST 
CENTURY. 

The artificial Comedy, or Comedy of manners, is 
quite extinct on our stage. Congreve and Farquhar 
show their heads once in seven years only, to be ex- 
ploded and put down instantly. The times cannot 
bear them. Is it for a few wild speeches, an occasional 
license of dialogue ? I think not altogether. The busi- 
ness of their dramatic characters will not stand the 
moral test. We screw everything up to that. Idle 
gallantry in a fiction, a dream, the passing pageant of 
an evening, startles us in the same way as the alarming 
indications of profligacy in a son or ward in real life 
should startle the parent or guardian. We have no such 
middle emotions as dramatic interests left. We see a 
stage libertine playing his loose pranks of two hours' 
duration, and of no after consequence, with the severe 
eyes which inspect real vices with their bearings upon 
two worlds. We are spectators to a plot or intrigue 
(not reducible in life to the point of strict morality), 
and take it all for truth. We substitute a real for a 
dramatic person, and judge him accordingly. We try 
him in our courts, from which there is no appeal to 
the dramatis personce^ his peers. We have been spoiled 
with — not sentimental comedy — but a tyrant far 
more pernicious to our pleasures which has succeeded 
to it, the exclusive and all-devouring drama of common 
life ; where the moral point is everything ; where, in- 
stead of the fictitious half-believed personages of the 
stage (the phantoms of old comedy), we recognize our- 



238 THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 

selves, our brothers, aunts, kinsfolk, allies, patrons, 
enemies, — the same as in life, — with an interest in 
what is going on so hearty and substantial, that we 
cannot afford our moral judgment, in its deepest and 
most vital results, to compromise or slumber for a 
moment. What is there transacting, by no modification 
is made to affect us in any other manner than the same 
events or characters would do in our relationships of 
life. We carry our fireside concerns to the theatre 
with us. We do not go thither, like our ancestors, to 
escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to con- 
firm our experience of it ; to make assurance double, 
and take a bond of fate. We must live our toilsome 
lives twice over, as it was the mournful privilege of 
Ulysses to descend twice to the shades. All that neu- 
tral ground of character, which stood between vice and 
virtue ; or which in fact was indifferent to neither, 
where neither properly was called in question ; that 
happy breathing-place from the burden of a perpetual 
moral questioning — the sanctuary and quiet Alsatia of 
hunted casuistry — is broken up and disfranchised, as 
injurious to the interests of society. The privileges of 
the place are taken away by law. We dare not dally 
with images, or names, of wrong. We bark like fool- 
ish dogs at shadows. We dread infection from the 
scenic representation of disorder, and fear a painted 
pustule. In our anxiety that our morality should not 
take cold, we wrap it up in a great blanket surtout of 
precaution against the breeze and sunshine. 

I confess for myself that (with no great delinquen- 
cies to answer for) I am glad for a season to take an 
airing beyond the diocese of the strict conscience, — 
Qot to live always in the precincts of the law-courts, — 



THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 239 

but now and then, for a dream-while or so, to imagine 
a world with no meddling restrictions — to get into 
recesses, whither the hunter cannot follow me — 

Secret shades 
Of woody Ida's inmost grove, 
While yet there was no fear of Jove. 

I come back to my cage and my restraint the fresher 
and more healthy for it. I wear my shackles more 
contentedly for having respired the breath of an imag- 
inary freedom. I do not know how it is with others, 
but I feel the better always for the perusal of one of 
Congreve's — nay, why should I not add even of 
Wycherley's comedies. I am the gayer at least for it ; 
and I could never connect those sports of a witty fancy 
in any shape with any result to be drawn from them to 
imitation in real life. They are a world of themselves 
almost as much as fairy-land. Take one of their char- 
acters, male or female (with few exceptions they are 
alike), and place it in a modern play, and my virtuous 
indignation shall rise against the profligate wretch as 
warmly as the Catos of the pit could desire ; because in 
a modern play I am to judge of the right and the 
wrong. The standard of police is the measure of polit- 
ical justice. The atmosphere will blight it, it cannot 
live here. It has got into a moral world, where it has 
no business, from which it must needs fall headlong ; as 
dizzy, and incapable of making a stand, as a Sweden- 
borgian bad spirit that has wandered unawares into the 
sphere of one of his Good Men, or Angels. But in its 
own world do we feel the creature is so very bad ? — 
The Fainalls and the Mirabells, the Dorimants and the 
Lady Touchwoods, in their own sphere, do not oifend 



240 THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 

my moral sense ; in fact they do not appeal to it at all 
They seem engaged in their proper element. They 
break through no laws, or conscientious restraints. 
They know of none. They have got out of Christen- 
dom into the land — what shall I call it ? — of cuck- 
oldry — the Utopia of gallantry, where pleasure is 
duty, and the manners perfect freedom. It is alto- 
gether a speculative scene of things, which has no 
reference whatever to the world that is. No good 
person can be justly ofPended as a spectator, because no 
good person suffers on the stage. Judged morally, 
every character in these plays — the few exceptions 
only are mistakes — is alike essentially vain and worth- 
less. The great art of Congreve is especially shown in 
this, that he has entirely excluded from his scenes, — 
some little generosities in the part of Angelica perhaps 
excepted, — not only anything like a faultless char- 
acter, but any pretensions to goodness or good feelings 
whatsoever. Whether he did this designedly, or in- 
stinctively, the eifect is as happy, as the design (if 
design) was bold. I used to wonder at the strange 
power which his Way of the World in particular pos- 
sesses of interesting you all along in the pursuits of 
characters, for whom you absolutely care nothing — 
for you neither hate nor love his personages — and I 
think it is owing to this very indifFerence for any, that 
you endure the whole. He has spread a privation of 
moral light, I will call it, rather than by the ugly name 
of palpable darkness, over his creations ; and his 
shadows flit before you without distinction or prefer- 
ence. Had he introduced a good character, a single 
gush of moral feeling, a revulsion of the judgment to 
actual life and actual duties, the impertinent Goshen 



THE AETIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 241 

would have only lighted to the discovery of deformities, 
which now are none, because we think them none. 

Translated into real life, the characters of his, and 
his Mend Wycherley's dramas, are profligates and 
strumpets, — the business of their brief existence, the 
undivided pursuit of lawless gallantry. No other 
spring of action, or possible motive of conduct, is 
recognized ; principles which, universally acted upon, 
must reduce this frame of things to a chaos. But we 
do them wrong in so translating them. No such 
effects are produced in their world. When we are 
among them, we are amongst a chaotic people. We 
are not to judge them by our usages. No reverend 
institutions are insulted by their proceedings — for 
they have none among them. No peace of families is 
violated — for no family ties exist among them. No 
purity of the marriage bed is stained — for none is 
supposed to have a being. No deep affections are 
disquieted, no holy wedlock bands are snapped asunder 

— for affection's depth and wedded faith are not of the 
growth of that soil. There is neither right nor wrong, 

— gratitude or its opposite, — claim or duty, — pater- 
nity or sonship. Of what consequence is it to Virtue, 
or bow is she at all concerned about it, whether Sir 
Simon, or Dapperwit, steal away Miss Martha ; or who 
is the father of Lord Froth's or Sir Paul Pliant's 
children. 

The whole is a passing pageant, where we should 
sit as unconcerned at the issues, for life or death, as at a 
battle of the frogs and mice. But, like Don Quixote, we 
take part against the puppets, and quite as impertinent- 
ly. We dare not contemplate an Atlantis, a scheme, 
t)ut of which our coxcombical moral sense is for a little 

VOL. III. 16 



242 THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 

transitory ease excluded. We have not the courage to 
imagine a state of things for which there is neither 
reward nor punishment. We chng to the painful 
necessities of shame and blame. We would indict 
our very dreams. 

Amidst the mortifying circumstances attendant upon 
growing old, it is something to have seen the School for 
Scandal in its glory. This comedy grew out of Con- 
greve and Wycherley, but gathered some allays of the 
sentimental comedy which followed theirs. It is im- 
possible that it should be now acted^ though it con- 
tinues, at long intervals, to be announced in the bills. 
Its hero, when Palmer played it at least, was Joseph 
Surface. When I remember the gay boldness, the 
graceful solemn plausibility, the measured step, the in- 
sinuating voice, — to express it in a word — the down- 
right acted villany of the part, so diflPerent from the 
pressure of conscious actual wickedness, — the hypo- 
critical assumption of hypocrisy, — which made Jack 
so deservedly a favorite in that character, I must needs 
conclude the present generation of play-goers more 
virtuous than myself, or more dense. I ft-eely confess 
that he divided the palm with me with his better 
brother ; that, in fact, I liked him quite as well. ISTot 
but there are passages, — like that, for instance, where 
Joseph is made to refuse a pittance to a poor relation, 
— incongruities which Sheridan was forced upon by 
the attempt to join the artificial with the sentimental 
comedy, either of which must destroy the other — but 
over these obstructions Jack's manner floated him so 
lightly, that a refusal from him no more shocked you, 
than the easy compliance of Charles gave you in real- 
ity any pleasure ; you got over the paltry question as 



THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 243 

quickly as you could, to get back into the regions of 
pure comedy, where no cold moral reigns. The hio-hly 
artificial manner of Palmer in this character counter- 
acted every disagreeable impression which you might 
have received from the contrast, supposing them real, 
between the two brothers. You did not believe in 
Joseph with the same faith with which you believed in 
Charles. The latter was a pleasant reality, the former 
a no less pleasant poetical foil to it. The comedy, 
I have said, is incongruous ; a mixture of Congreve 
with sentimental incompatibilities ; the gayety upon 
the whole is buoyant ; but it required the consummate 
art of Palmer to reconcile the discordant elements. 

A player with Jack's talents, if we had one now, 
w^ould not dare to do the part in the same manner. 
He would instinctively avoid every turn which might 
tend to unrealize, and so to make the character fasci- 
nating. He must take his cue from his spectators, who 
would expect a bad man and a good man as rigidly 
opposed to each other as the death-beds of those 
geniuses are contrasted in the prints, which I am sorry 
to say have disappeared from the windows of my old 
friend Carrington Bowles, of St. Paul's Churchyard 
memory, — (an exhibition as venerable as the adjacent 
cathedral, and almost coeval,) of the bad and good man 
at the hour of death ; where the ghastly apprehensions 
of the former, — and truly the grim phantom with his 
reality of a toasting-fork is not to be despised, — so 
finely contrast with the meek complacent kissing of the 
rod, — taking it in like honey and butter, — with which 
the latter submits to the scythe of the gentle bleeder, 
Time, who wields his lancet with the apprehensive 
finger of a popular young ladies' surgeon. What flesh, 



244 THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF- THE LAST CENTURY. 

like loving grass, would not covet to meet half-way the 
stroke of such a delicate mower ? — John Palmer was 
twice an actor in this exquisite part. He was playing 
to you all the while that he was playing upon Sir Peter 
and his lady. You had the first intimation of a senti- 
ment before it was on his lips. His altered voice was 
meant to you, and you were to suppose that his ficti- 
tious co-flutterers on the stage perceived nothing at all 
of it. What was it to you if that half reality, the hus- 
band, was overreached by the puppetry — or the thui 
thing (Lady Teazle's reputation) was persuaded it was 
dymg of a plethory? The fortunes of Othello and 
Desdemona were not concerned in it. Poor Jack has 
passed from the stage in good time, that he did not live 
to this our age of seriousness. The pleasant old Teazle 
King^ too, is gone in good time. His manner would 
scarce have passed current in our day. We must love 
or hate, — acquit or condemn, — censure or pity, — 
exert our detestable coxcombry of moral judgment 
upon everything. Joseph Surface, to go down now, 
must be a downright revolting villain, — no compro- 
mise — his first appearance must shock and give hor- 
ror, — his specious plausibilities, which the pleasurable 
faculties of our fathers welcomed with such hearty 
greetings, knowing that no harm (dramatic harm even) 
could come, or was meant to come, of them, must in- 
spire a cold and killing aversion. Charles (the real 
canting person of the scene, — for the hypocrisy of 
Joseph has its ulterior legitimate ends, but his brother's 
professions of a good heart centre in downright self- 
satisfaction) must be loved^ and Joseph hated. To 
balance one disagreeable reality with another. Sir Peter 
Teazle must be no longer the comic idea of a fretfiil old 



THE AETIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 245 

oachelor bridegroom, whose teasings (while King acted 
it) were evidently as much played off at you, as they 
were meant to concern anybody on the stage, — he 
must be a real person, capable in law of sustaining an 
injifry, — a person towards whom duties are to be ac- 
knowledged, — the genuine crim. con. antagonist of 
the villanous seducer Joseph. To realize him more, 
his sufferings under his unfortunate match must have 
the downright pungency of life, — must (or should) 
make you not mirthfal but uncomfortable, just as the 
same predicament would move you in a neighbor or 
old friend. The delicious scenes which give the play 
its name and zest, must affect you in the same serious 
manner as ff you heard the reputation of a dear female 
friend attacked in your real presence. Crabtree and 
Sir Benjamin — those poor snakes that live but in the 
sunshine of your mirth — must be ripened by this hot- 
bed process of realization into asps or amphisb^nas ; 
and Mrs. Candour — O ! frightftil ! — become a hooded 
serpent. Oh ! who that remembers Parsons and Dodd, 
— the wasp and butterfly of the School for Scandal, — 
in those two characters ; and charming natural Miss 
Pope, the perfect gentlewoman, as distinguished from 
the fine lady of comedy, in this latter part, — would 
forego the true scenic delight, — the escape fr'om life, — 
the oblivion of consequences, — the holiday barring out 
of the pedant Reflection, — those Saturnalia of two or 
three brief hours, well won from the world, — to sit 
instead at one of our modern plays, — to have his 
coward conscience (that forsooth must not be left for 
a moment) stimulated with perpetual appeals, — dulled 
rather, and blunted, as a faculty without repose must 
be, — and his moral vanity pampered with images of 



246 THE ARTIFICIAL COMEDY OF THE LAST CENTURY. 

notional justice, notional beneficence, lives saved with- 
out the spectator's risk, and fortunes given away that 
cost the author nothing ? 

No piece was, perhaps, ever so completely cast in 
all its parts as this manager's comedy. Miss Farren 
had succeeded to Mrs. Abington in Lady Teazle ; and 
Smith, the original Charles, had retired when I first 
saw it. The rest of the characters, with very slight 
exceptions, remained. I remember it was then the 
fashion to cry down John Kemble, who took the part 
of Charles after Smith ; but, I thought, very unjustly. 
Smith, I fancy, was more airy, and took the eye with 
a certain gayety of person. He brought with him no 
sombre recollections of tragedy. He had not to expiate 
the fault of having pleased beforehand in lofty decla- 
mation. He had no sins of Hamlet or of Richard to 
atone for. His failure in these parts was a passport to 
success in one of so opposite a tendency. But, as far 
as I could judge, the weighty sense of Kemble made up 
for more personal incapacity than he had to answer for. 
His harshest tones m this part came steeped and dul- 
cified in good-humor. He made his defects a grace. 
His exact declamatory manner, as he managed it, only 
served to convey the points of his dialogue with more 
precision. It seemed to head the shafts to carry them 
deeper. Not one of his sparkling sentences was lost. 
I remember minutely how he delivered each in succes- 
sion, and cannot by any eflPort imagine how any of them 
could be altered for the better. No man could deliver 
brilliant dialogue, — the dialogue of Congreve or of 
Wycherley, — because none understood it, — half so 
well as John Kemble. His Valentine, in Love for 
Love, was, to my recollection, faultless. He flagged 



ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 247 

sometimes in the intervals of tragic passion. He would 
slumber over the level parts of an heroic character. 
His Macbeth has been known to nod. But he always 
seemed to me to be particularly alive to pointed and 
witty dialogue. The relaxing levities of tragedy have 
not been touched by any since him, — the playful 
court-bred spirit in which he condescended to the 
players in Hamlet, — the sportive relief which he 
threw into the darker shades of Richard, — - disap- 
peared with him. He had his sluggish moods, his 
torpors, — but they were the halting-stones and rest- 
ing-place of his tragedy, — politic savings, and fetches 
of the breath, — husbandry of the lungs, where nature 
pointed him to be an economist, — rather, I think, 
than errors of the judgment. They were, at worst, 
less painful than the eternal tormenting unappeasable 
vigilance, — the " lidless dragon eyes," of present 
fashionable tragedy. 



ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 

Not many nights ago, I had come home from seeing 
this extraordinary performer in Cockletop ; and when 
I retired to my pillow, his whimsical image still stuck 
by me, in a manner as to threaten sleep. In vain I 
tried to divest myself of it, by conjuring up the most 
opposite associations. I resolved to be serious. I raised 
up the gravest topics of life ; private misery, public 
calamity. All would not do ; 



248 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 

There the antic sate 
Mocking our state 

his queer visnomy — his bewildering costume — all the 
strange things which he had raked together, — his 
serpentine rod, swagging about in his pocket, — Cleo- 
patra's tear, and the rest of his relics, — O'Keefe's wild 
farce, and his wilder commentary, — till the passion of 
laughter, Hke grief in excess, relieved itself by its own 
weight, inviting the sleep which in the first instance it 
had driven away. 

But I was not to escape so easily. No sooner did I 
fall into slumbers, than the same image, only more per- 
plexing, assailed me in the shape of dreams. Not one 
Munden, but five hundred, were dancing before me, 
like the faces which, whether you will or no, come 
when you have been taking opium, — all the strange 
combinations, which this strangest of all strange mortals 
ever shot his proper countenance into, from the day he 
came commissioned to dry up the tears of the town for 
the loss of the now almost forgotten Edwin. O for the 
power of the pencil to have fixed them when I awoke ! 
A season or two since, there was exhibited a Hogarth 
gallery. I do not see why there should not be a Mun- 
den gallery. In richness and variety, the latter would 
not fall far short of the former. 

There is one face of Farley, one face of Knight, one 
(but what a one it is ! ) of Liston ; but Munden has 
none that you can properly pin down, and call his. 
When you think he has exhausted his battery of looks, 
in unaccountable warfare w^ith your gravity, suddenly 
he sprouts out an entirely new set of features, like 
Hydra. He is not one, but legion ; not so much a 
comedian, as a company. If his name could be multi- 



ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 249 

plied liked his countenance, it might fill a playbill. 
He, and he alone, literally makes faces ; applied to any 
other person, the phrase is a mere figure, denoting 
certain modifications of the human countenance. Out 
of some invisible wardrobe he dips for faces, as his 
Mend Suett used for wigs, and fetches them out as 
easily. I should not be surprised to see him some 
day put out the head of a river-horse ; or come forth 
a pewit, or lapwing, some feathered metamorphosis. 

I have seen this gifted actor in Sir Christopher 
Curry — in old Dornton — diffuse a glow of sentiment 
which has made the pulse of a crowded theatre beat 
like that of one man ; when he has come in aid of the 
pulpit, doing good to the moral heart of a people. I 
have seen some faint approaches to this sort of excel- 
lence in other players. But in the grand grotesque 
of farce, Munden stands out as single and unaccom- 
panied as Hogarth. Hogarth, strange to tell, had no 
followers. The school of Munden began, and must 
end, with himself. 

Can any man wonder^ like him? can any man see 
ghosts^ like him ? or fight with his own shadow — 
" SESSA " — as he does in that strangely-neglected 
thing, the Cobbler of Preston — where his alternations 
from the Cobbler to the Magnifico, and from the Mag- 
nifico to the Cobbler, keep the brain of the spectator 
in as wild a ferment, as if some Arabian Night were 
being acted before him. Who like him can throw, 
or ever attempted to throw, a preternatural interest 
over the commonest daily-life objects ? A table or a 
joint-stool, in his conception, rises into a dignity equiv- 
alent to Cassiopeia's chair. It is invested with con- 
stellatory importance. You could not speak of it with 



250 ON THE ACTING OF MUNDEN. 

more deference, if it were mounted into the firmament. 
A beggar in the hands of Michael Angelo, says Fuseli, 
rose the Patriarch of Poverty. So the gusto of Mun- 
den antiquates and ennobles what it touches. His pots 
and his ladles are as grand and primal as the seething- 
pots and hooks seen in old prophetic vision. A tub of 
butter, contemplated by him, amounts to a Platonic 
idea. He understands a leg of mutton in its quiddity. 
He stands wondering, amid the commonplace materials 
of life, like primeval man with the sun and stars about 
him. 



THE 



LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA, 



PREFACE. 

BY A FRIEND OF THE LATE ELIA, 



This poor gentleman, who for some months past had been In a 
declining way, hath at length paid his final tribute to nature. 

To say truth, it is time he were gone. The humor of the 
thing, if there ever was much in it, was pretty well exhausted ; 
and a two years' and a half existence has been a tolerable dura- 
tion for a phantom. 

I am now at liberty to confess, that much which I have heard 
objected to my late friend's writings was well founded. Crude 
they are, I grant you — a sort of unlicked, incondite things — 
villanously pranked in an affected array of antique modes and 
phrases. They had not been his, if they had been other than 
such ; and better it is, that a writer should be natural in a self- 
pleasing quaintness, than to affect a naturalness (so called) that 
should be strange to him. Egotistical they have been pronounced 
by some who did not know, that what he tells us, as of himself, 
was often true only (historically) of another; as in a former 
Essay (to save many instances) — where under the Jirst person 
(his favorite figure) he shadows forth the forlorn estate of a 
country boy placed at a London school, far from his friends and 
connections, — in direct opposition to his own early history. If 
it be egotism to imply and twine with his own identity the griefs 



254 PEEPACE. 

and affections of another — making himself many, or reducing 
many unto himself — then is the skilful novelist, who all along 
brings in his hero or heroine, speaking of themselves, the greatest 
egotist of all ; who yet has never, therefore, been accused of that 
narrowness. And how shall the intenser dramatist escape being 
faulty, who, doubtless, under cover of passion uttered by another, 
oftentimes gives blameless vent to his most inward feelings, and 
expresses his own story modestly ? 

My late friend was in many respects a singular character. 
Those who did not like him, hated him; and some, who once 
liked him, afterwards became his bitterest haters. The truth is, 
he gave himself too little concern what he uttered, and in whose 
presence. He observed neither time nor place, and would e'en 
out with what came uppermost. With the severe religionist he 
would pass for a free-thinker; while the other faction set him 
down for a bigot, or persuaded themselves that he belied his senti- 
ments. Few understood him ; and I am not certain that at all 
times he quite understood himself He too much affected that 
dangerous figure — irony. He sowed doubtful speeches, and 
reaped plain, unequivocal hatred. He would interrupt the gravest 
discussion with some light jest ; and yet, perhaps, not quite irrele- 
vant in ears that could understand it. Your long and much 
talkers hated him. The informal habit of his mind, joined to an 
inveterate impediment of speech, forbade him to be an orator; 
and he seemed determined that no one else should play that part 
when he was present. He was petit and ordinary in his person 
and appearance. I have seen him sometimes in what is called 
good company, but where he has been a stranger, sit silent, and be 
suspected for an odd fellow ; till some unlucky occasion provoking 
it, he would stutter out some senseless pun (not altogether senseless 
perhaps, if rightly taken), which has stamped his character for the 
evening. It was hit or miss with him ; but nine times out of ten, 
he contrived by this device to send away a whole company his 



PREFACE. 255 

enemies. His conceptions rose kindlier than his utterance, and 
his happiest impromptus had the appearance of effort. He has 
been accused of trying to be witty, when in truth he was but 
struggling to give his poor thoughts articulation. He chose his 
companions for some individuality of character which they mani- 
fested. Hence, not many persons of science, and few professed 
literati, were of his councils. They were, for the most part, per- 
sons of an uncertain fortune ; and, as to such people commonly 
nothing is more obnoxious than a gentleman of settled (though 
moderate) income, he passed with most of them for a great miser. 
To my knowledge this was a mistake. His intlmados, to confess a 
truth, were in the world's eye a ragged regiment. He found 
them floating on the surface of society ; and the color, or some- 
thing else, in the weed pleased him. The burrs stuck to him — 
but they were good and loving burrs for all that. He never 
greatly cared for the society of what are called good people. If 
any of these were scandalized (and offences were sure to arise), 
he could not help it. When he has been remonstrated with for 
not making more concessions to the feelings of good people, he 
would retort by asking, what one point did these good people 
ever concede to him ? He was temperate in his meals and diver- 
sions, but always kept a little on this side of abstemiousness. Only 
in the use of the Indian weed he might be thought a little ex- 
cessive. He took it, he would say, as a solvent of speech. Marry 
— as the friendly vapor ascended, how his prattle would curl up 
sometimes with it ! the ligaments which tongue-tied him, were loos- 
9ued, and the stammerer proceeded a statist ! 

I do not know whether I ought to bemoan or rejoice that my 
old friend is departed. His jests were beginning to grow ob- 
solete, and his stories to be found out. He felt the approaches 
of age ; and while he pretended to cling to life, you saw how 
slender were the ties left to bind him. Discoursing with him 
latterly on this subject, he expressed himself with a pettishness, 



256 PREFACE. 

which I thought unworthy of him. In our walks about his sub- 
urban retreat (as he called it) at Shacklewell, some children 
belonging to a school of industry had met us, and bowed and 
curtseyed, as he thought, in an especial manner to Jiim. " They 
take me for a visiting governor," he muttered earnestly. He 
had a horror, which he carried to a foible, of looking like any- 
thing important and parochial. He thought that he approached 
nearer to that stamp daily. He had a general aversion from 
being treated like a grave or respectable character, and kept a 
wary eye upon the advances of age that should so entitle him. 
He herded always, while it was possible, with people younger 
than himself. He did not conform to the march of time, but was 
dragged along in the procession. His manners lagged behind his 
years. He was too much of the boy-man. The toga virilis never 
sat gracefully on his shoulders. The impressions of infancy had 
burnt into him, and he resented the impertinence of manhood. 
These were weaknesses ; but such as they were, they are a key to 
explicate some of his writings. 



THE LAST ESSAYS OF ELIA. 



BLAKESMOOR IN H ^SHIRE. 

I DO not know a pleasure more affecting than to 
range at will over the deserted apartments of some fine 
old family mansion. The traces of extinct grandeur 
admit of a better passion than envy ; and contempla- 
tions on the great and good, whom we fancy in succes- 
sion to have been its inhabitants, weave for us illusions, 
incompatible with the bustle of modern occupancy, and 
vanities of foolish present aristocracy. The same dif- 
ference of feeling, I think, attends us between entering 
an empty and a crowded church. In the latter it is 
chance but some present human frailty, — an act of 
inattention on the part of some of the auditory, — or a 
trait of affectation, or worse, vainglory on that of the 
preacher, — puts us by our best thoughts, disharmo- 
nizing the place and the occasion. But wouldst thou 
know the beauty of holiness ? — go alone on some 
weekday, borrowing the keys of good Master Sexton, 
traverse the cool aisles of some country church ; think 
of the piety that has kneeled there, — the congrega- 
tions, old and young, that have found consolation there, 
— the meek pastor, — the docile parishioner. With 
no disturbing emotions, no cross conflicting compari- 

VOL. III. 17 



258 BLAKESMOOR IN H- SHIRE. 

sons, drink in the tranquillity of the place, till thou 
thyself become as fixed and motionless as the marble 
effigies that kneel and weep around thee. 

Journeying northward lately, I could not resist 
going some few miles out of my road to look upon 
the remains of an old great house with which I had 
been impressed in this way in infancy. I was apprised 
that the owner of it had lately pulled it down ; still I 
had a vague notion that it could not all have perished, 
that so much solidity with magnificence could not have 
been crushed all at once into the mere dust and rubbish 
which I found it. 

The work of ruin had proceeded with a swift hand 
indeed, and the demolition of a few weeks had reduced 
it to — an antiquity. 

I was astonished at the indistinction of everything. 
Where had stood the great gates ? What bounded 
the court-yard ? Whereabout did the outhouses com- 
mence ? A few bricks only lay as representatives of 
that which was so stately and so spacious. 

Death does not shrink up his human victim at this 
rate. The burnt ashes of a man weigh more in their 
proportion. 

Had I seen these brick-and-mortar knaves at their 
process of destruction, at the plucking of every panel I 
should have felt the varlets at my heart. I should 
have cried out to them to spare a plank at least out of 
the cheerful storeroom, in whose hot window-seat I 
used to sit and read Cowley, with the grass-plot before, 
and the hum and flappings of that one solitary wasp 
that ever haunted it about me, — it is in mine ears 
now, as oft as summer returns ; or a panel of the 
yellow-room. 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 259 

Why, every plank and panel of that house for me 
had magic in it. The tapestried bedrooms, — tapestry 
so much better than painting — not adorning merely, 
but peopling the wainscots, — at which childhood ever 
and anon would steal a look, shifting its coverlid (re- 
placed as quickly) to exercise its tender courage in 
a momentary eye-encounter with those stern bright 
visages, staring reciprocally, — all Ovid on the walls, 
in colors vivider than his descriptions. Actgeon in mid 
sprout, with the unappeasable prudery of Diana ; and 
the still more provoking, and almost culinary coolness 
of Dan Phoebus, eel-fashion, deliberately divesting of 
Marsyas. 

Then, that haunted room — in which old Mrs. 
Battle died, — whereinto I have crept, but always in 
the daytime, with a passion of fear; and a sneaking 
curiosity, terror-tainted, to hold communication with 
the past. Sow shall they hiiild it up again f 

It was an old deserted place, yet not so long deserted 
but that traces of the splendor of past inmates were 
everywhere apparent. Its furniture was still standing 

— even to the tarnished gilt leather battledores, and 
crumbling feathers of shuttlecocks in the nursery, 
which told that children had once played there. But 
I was a lonely child, and had the range at will of 
every apartment, knew every nook and corner, won- 
dered and worshipped everywhere. 

The solitude of childhood is not so much the mother 
of thought, as it is the feeder ' of love, and silence, and 
admiration. So strange a passion for the place pos- 
sessed me in those years, that, though there lay — I 
shame to say how few roods distant from the mansion 

— half hid by trees what I judged some romantic lake. 



260 BLAKESMOOE IN H SHIRE. 

such was the spell which bound me to the house, and 
such my carefulness not to pass its strict and proper 
precincts, that the idle waters lay unexplored for me ; 
and not till late in life, curiosity prevailing over elder 
devotion, I found, to my astonishment, a pretty brawl- 
ing brook had been the Lacus Incognitus of my infancy. 
Variegated views, extensive prospects, — - and those at 
no great distance from the house, — I was told of such 
— what were they to me, being out of the boundaries 
of my Eden ? — So far from a wish to roam, I would 
have drawn, methought, still closer the fences of my 
chosen prison ; and have been hemmed in by a yet 
securer cincture of those excluding garden walls. I 
could have exclaimed with that garden-loving poet — 

Bind me, ye woodbines, in your twines ; 
Curl me about, ye gadding vines ; 
And oh so close your circles lace, 
That I may never leave this place; 
But, lest your fetters prove too weak, 
Ere I your silken bondage break. 
Do you, brambles, chain me too, 
And, courteous briars, nail me through. 

I was here as in a lonely temple. Snug firesides, — 
the low-built roof, — parlors ten feet by ten, — frugal 
boards, and all the homeliness of home, — these were 
the condition of my birth, — the wholesome soil which 
I was planted in. Yet, without impeachment to their 
tenderest lessons, I am not sorry to have had glances of 
something beyond ; and to have taken, if but a peep, 
in childhood, at the contrasting accidents of a great 
fortune. 

To have the feeling of gentility, it is not necessary to 
have been born gentle. The pride of ancestry may be 
had on cheaper terms than to be obliged to an importu- 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 261 

nate race of ancestors ; and the coatless antiquary in 
his unemblazoned cell, revolving the long line of a 
Mowbray's or De Clifford's pedigree, at those sounding 
names may warm himself into as gay a vanity as these 
who do inherit them. The claims of birth are ideal 
merely, and what herald shall go about to strip me of 
an idea ? Is it trenchant to their swords ? can it be 
hacked off as a spur can ? or torn away like a tar- 
nished garter ? 

What else were the families of the great to us ? what 
pleasure should we take in their tedious genealogies, or 
their capitulatory brass monuments ? What to us the 
uninterrupted current of their bloods, if our own did 
not answer within us to a cognate and correspondent 
elevation ? 

Or wherefore else, O tattered and diminished 
'scutcheon that hung upon the time-worn walls of 
thy princely stairs, Blakesmoor ! have I in child- 
hood so oft stood poring upon the mystic characters, 
— thy emblematic supporters, with their prophetic 
" Resurgam," — till, every dreg of peasantry purging 
off, I received into myself Very Gentility ? Thou 
wert first in my morning eyes ; and of nights hast 
detained my steps from bedward, till it was but a 
step from gazing at thee to dreaming on thee. 

This is the only true gentry by adoption ; the 
veritable change of blood, and not, as empirics have 
fabled, by transfusion. 

Who it was by dying that had earned the splendid 
trophy, I know not, I inquired not ; but its fading 
rags, and colors cobweb-stained, told that its subject 
was of two centuries back. 

And what if my ancestor at that date was some 



262 BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 

Damoetas, — feeding flocks — not his own, upon the 
hills of Lincoln, — did I in less earnest vindicate to 
myself the family trappings of this once proud JEgon ? 
repaying by a backward triumph the insults he might 
possibly have heaped in his lifetime upon my poor 
pastoral progenitor. 

If it were presumption so to speculate, the present 
owners of the mansion had least reason to complain. 
They had long forsaken the old house of their fathers 
for a newer trifle ; and I was left to appropriate to 
myself what images I could pick up, to raise my fancy, 
or to soothe my vanity. 

I was the true descendant of those old W s ; 

and not the present family of that name, who had fled 
the old waste places. 

Mine was that gallery of good old family portraits, 
which as I have gone over, giving them in fancy my 
own family name, one — and then another — would 
seem to smile, reaching forward from the canvas, to 
recognize the new relationship ; while the rest looked 
grave, as it seemed, at the vacancy in their dwelling, 
and thoughts of fled posterity. 

That Beauty with the cool blue pastoral drapery, 
and a lamb — that hung next the great bay window — 

with the bright yellow H shire hair, and eye of 

watchet hue — so like my Alice ! — I am persuaded 
she was a true Elia, — Mildred Elia, I take it. 

Mine too, Blakesmoor, was thy noble Marble Hall 
with its mosaic pavenlents, and its Twelve Cassars, — 
stately busts in marble, — ranged round ; of whose 
countenances, young reader of faces as I was, the 
frowning beauty of Nero, I remember, had most of my 
wonder; but the mild Galba had my love. There 



BLAKESMOOR IN H SHIRE. 263 

they stosd in the coldness of death, yet freshness of im- 
mortality. 

Mine too thy lofty Justice Hall, with its one chair 
of authority, high-backed and wickered, once the terror 
of luckless poacher, or self-forgetful maiden — so com- 
mon since, that bats have roosted in it. 

Mine too, — whose else ? — thy costly fruit-garden, 
with its sun-baked southern wall ; the ampler pleasure- 
garden, rising backwards from the house in triple ter- 
races, with flower-pots now of palest lead, save that 
a speck here and there, saved from the elements, 
bespake their pristine state to have been gilt and 
glittering ; the verdant quarters backwarder still ; and, 
stretching still beyond, in old formality, thy firry 
wilderness, the haunt of the squirrel, and the day-long 
murmuring wood-pigeon, with that antique image in 
the centre, God or Goddess I wist not ; but child of 
Athens or old Rome paid never a sincerer worship to 
Pan or to Sylvan us in their native groves, than I to 
that fragmental mystery. 

Was it for this, that I kissed my childish hands too 
fervently in your idol-worship, walks and windings of 
Blakesmoor ! for this, or what sin of mine, has the 
plough passed over your pleasant places ? I sometimes 
think that as men, when they die, do not die all, so of 
their extinguished habitations there may be a hope — 
a germ to be revivified. 



264 POOR RELATIONS. 



POOR RELATIONS. 



A Poor Relation — is the most irrelevant thing in 
nature, — a piece of impertinent correspondency, — an 
odious approximation, — a haunting conscience, — a 
preposterous shadow, lengthening in the noontide of 
our prosperity, — an unwelcome remembrancer, — a 
perpetually recurring mortification, — a drain on your 
purse, a more intolerable dun upon your pride, — a 
drawback upon success, — a rebuke to your rising, — 
a stain in your blood, — a blot on your 'scutcheon, — 
a rent in your garment, — a death's head at your ban- 
quet, — Agathocles's pot, — a Mordecai in your gate, a 
Lazarus at your door, — a lion in your path, — a frog 
in your chamber, — a fly in your ointment, — a mote in 
your eye, — a triumph to your enemy, an apology to 
your friends, — the one thing not needful, — the hail in 
harvest, — the ounce of sour in a pound of sweet. 

He is known by his knock. Your heart telleth you 

" That is Mr. ." A rap, between familiarity and 

respect ; that demands, and at the same time seems to 
despair of, entertainment. He entereth smiling and — 
embarrassed. He holdeth out his hand to you to shake, 
and — draweth it back again. He casually looketh in 
about dinner-time — when the table is full. He of- 
fereth to go away, seeing you have company, — but is 
induced to stay. He filleth a chair, and your visitor's 
two children are accommodated at a side table. He 
never cometh upon open days, when your wife says 

with some complacency, " My dear, perhaps Mr. 

will drop in to-day." He remembereth birthdays, — 



POOR RELATIONS. 265 

and professeth he is fortunate to have stumbled upon 
one. He declareth against fish, the turbot being small 
— yet sufFereth himself to be importuned into a slice, 
against his first resolution. He sticketh by the port, — 
yet will be prevailed upon to empty the remainder glass 
of claret, if a stranger press it upon him. He is a 
puzzle to the servants, who are fearful of being too 
obsequious, or not civil enough, to him. The guests 
think " they have seen him before." Every one 
speculateth upon his condition ; and the most part 
take him to be — a tidewaiter. He calleth you by 
your Christian name, to imply that his other is the 
same with your own. He is too familiar by half, yet 
you wish he had less diffidence. With half the famili- 
arity, he might pass for a casual dependant ; with more 
boldness, he would be in no danger of being taken for 
what he is. He is too humble for a friend ; yet taketh 
on him more state than befits a client. He is a worse 
guest than a country tenant, inasmuch as he bringeth 
up no rent — ■ yet 'tis odds, from his garb and demeanor, 
that your guests take him for one. He is asked to 
make one at the whist-table ; refuseth on the score of 
poverty, and — resents being left out. When the com- 
pany break up, he proffereth to go for a coach — and 
lets the servant go. He recollects your grandfather; 
and will thrust in some mean and quite unimportant 
anecdote — of the family. He knew it when it was 
not quite so flourishing as "he is blest in seeing it 
now." He reviveth past situations, to institute what 
he calleth — favorable comparisons. With a reflecting 
sort of congratulation, he will inquire the price of your 
furniture ; and insults you with a special commenda- 
tion of your window-curtains. He is of opinion that 



266 POOR EELATIONS. 

the urn is the more elegant shape, but, after all, there 
was something more comfortable about the old tea- 
kettle, — which you must remember. He dare say 
you must find a great convenience in having a carriage 
of your own, and appealeth to your lady if it is not so. 
Inquireth if you have had your arms done on vellum 
yet ; and did not know, till lately, that such-and-such 
had been the crest of the family. His memory is 
unseasonable ; his compliments perverse ; his talk a 
trouble ; his stay pertinacious ; and when he goeth 
away, you dismiss his chair into a corner, as precipi- 
tately as possible, and feel fairly rid of two nuis- 
ances. 

There is a worse evil under the sun, and that is — a 
female Poor Relation. You may do something with 
the other ; you may pass him off tolerably well ; but 
your indigent she-relative is hopeless. '' He is an old 
humorist," you may say, " and affects to go threadbare. 
His circumstances are better than folks would take 
them to be. You are fond of having a Character at 
your table, and truly he is one." But in the indica- 
tions of female poverty there can be no disguise. No 
woman dresses below herself from caprice. The truth 
must out without shuffling. " She is plainly related to 

the L s ; or what does she at their house ? " She 

is, in all probability, your wife's cousin. Nine times out 
of ten, at least, this is the case. Her garb is something 
between a gentlewoman and a beggar, yet the former 
evidently predominates. She is most provokingly hum- 
ble, and ostentatiously sensible to her inferiority. He 
may require to be repressed sometimes — aliquayido suf- 
flaminandus erat — but there is no raising her. You 
send her soup at dinner, and she begs to be helped — 



POOR RELATIONS. 267 

after the gentlemen. Mr. — — - requests the honor of 
taking wine with her ; she hesitates between Port and 
Madeira, and chooses the former — because he does. 
She calls the servant Sir ; and insists on not troubling 
him to hold her plate. The housekeeper patronizes her. 
The children's governess takes upon her to correct her, 
when she has mistaken the piano for the harpsichord. 

Richard Amlet, Esq., in the play, is a notable in- 
stance of the disadvantages, to which this chimerical 
notion of affinity constituting a claim to acquaintance^ 
may subject the spirit of a gentleman. A little foolish 
blood is all that is betwixt him and a lady with a great 
estate. His stars are perpetually crossed by the malig- 
nant maternity of an old woman, who persists in call- 
ing him " her son Dick." But she has wherewithal in 
the end to recompense his indignities, and float him 
again "upon the brilliant surface, under which it had 
been her seeming business and pleasure all along to 
sink him. All men, besides, *are not of Dick's temper- 
ament. I knew an Amlet in real life, who, wanting 

Dick's buoyancy, sank indeed. Poor W was of 

my own standing at Christ's, a fine classic, and a youth 
of promise. If he had a blemish, it w^as too much 
pride ; but its quality was inoffensive ; it was not of 
that sort which hardens the heart, and serves to keep 
inferiors at a distance ; it only sought to ward off dero- 
gation from itself. It was the principle of self-respect 
carried as far as it could go, without infringing upon 
that respect, which he would have every one else 
equally maintain for himself. He would have you to 
think alike with him on this topic. Many a quarrel 
have I had with him, when we were rather older boys, 
and our tallness made us more obnoxious to observation 



268 POOR RELATIONS. 

in the blue clothes, because I would not thread the 
alleys and blind ways of the town with him to elude 
notice, when we have been out together on a holiday 
in the streets of this sneering and prying metropolis. 

W went, sore with these notions, to Oxford, where 

the dignity and sweetness of a scholar's life, meeting 
with the alloy of a humble introduction, wrought in 
him a passionate devotion to the place, with a profound 
aversion from the society. The servitor's gown (worse 
than his school array) clung to him with Nessian 
venom. He thought himself ridiculous in a garb, 
under which Latimer must have walked erect, and in 
which Hooker, in his young days, possibly flaunted in 
a vein of no discommendable vanity. In the depth of 
college shades, or in his lonely chamber, the poor stu- 
dent shrunk from observation. He found shelter among 
books, which insult not ; and studies, that ask no ques- 
tions of a youth's finances. He was lord of his library, 
and seldom cared for looking out beyond his domains. 
The healing influence of studious pursuits was upon 
him, to soothe and to abstract. He was almost a 
healthy man ; when the waywardness of his fate broke 
out against him with a second and worse malignity. 
The father of W had hitherto exercised the hum- 
ble profession of house-painter at N , near Oxford. 

A supposed interest with some of the heads of colleges 
had now induced him to take up his abode in that city, 
with the hope of being employed upon some public 
works which were talked of. From that moment I 
read in the countenance of the young man the determi- 
nation which at length tore him from academical pur- 
suits forever. To a person unacquainted with our 
universities, the distance between the gownsmen and 



POOR EELATIONS. 269 

the townsmen, as they are called — the trading part 
of the latter especially — is carried to an excess that 
would appear harsh and incredible. The temperament 

of W 's father was diametrically the reverse of his 

own. Old W was a little, busy, cringing trades- 
man, who, with his son upon his arm, would stand 
bowing and scraping, cap in hand, to anything that 
wore the semblance of a gown, — insensible to the 
winks and opener remonstrances of the young man, to 
whose chamber-fellow, or equal in standing, perhaps, 
he was thus obsequiously and gratuitously ducking. 

Such a state of things could not last. W must 

change the air of Oxford, or be suffocated. He chose 
the former; and let the sturdy moralist, who strains 
the point of the filial duties as high as they can bear, 
censure the dereliction ; he cannot estimate the strug- 
gle. I stood with W , the last afternoon I ever 

saw him, under the eaves of his paternal dwelling. It 
was in the fine lane leading from the High-street to the 

back of * * * college, where W kept his rooms. 

He seemed thoughtful and more reconciled. I ven- 
tured to rally him — finding him in a better mood — 
upon a representation of the Artist Evangelist, which 
the old man, whose afikirs were beginning to flourish, 
had caused to be set up in a splendid sort of frame over 
his really handsome shop, either as a token of pros- 
perity or badge of gratitude to his saint. W 

looked up at the Luke, and, like Satan, "knew his 
mounted sign — and fled." A letter on his father's 
table the next morning announced that he had accepted 
a commission in a regiment about to embark for Portu- 
gal. He was among the first who perished before the 
walls of St. Sebastian. 



270 POOR RELATIONS. 

I do not know how, upon a subject which I began 
with treating half seriously, I should have fallen upon 
a recital so eminently painful ; but this theme of poor 
relationship is replete with so much matter for tragic 
as well as comic associations, that it is difficult to keep 
the account distinct without blending. The earliest 
impressions v/hich I received on this matter, are cer- 
tainly not attended with anything painful, or very 
humiliating, in the recalling. At my father's table (no 
very splendid one) was to be found, every Saturday, 
the mysterious figure of an aged gentleman, clothed in 
neat black, of a sad yet comely appearance. His de- 
portment was of the essence of gravity ; his words 
few or none ; and I was not to make a noise in his 
presence. I had little inclination to have done so — ■ 
for my cue was to admire in silence. A particular 
elbow-chair was appropriated to him, which was in no 
case to be violated. A peculiar sort of sweet pudding, 
which appeared on no other occasion, distinguished the 
days of his coming. I used to think him a prodigiously 
rich man. All I could make out of him was, that he 
and my father had been schoolfellows, a world ago, at 
Lincoln, and that he came from the Mint. The Mint 
I knew to be a place where all the money was coined 
— and I thought he was the owner of all that money. 
Awful ideas of the Tower twined themselves about his 
presence. He seemed above human infirmities and 
passions. A sort of melancholy grandeur invested him. 
From some inexplicable doom I fancied him obliged to 
go about in an eternal suit of mourning ; a captive — 
a stately being, let out of the Tower on Saturdays. 
Often have I wondered at the temerity of my father, 
who, in spite of an habitual general respect which we 



POOE RELATIONS. 271 

all in common manifested towards him, would venture 
now and then to stand up against him in some argu- 
ment, touching their youthful days. The houses of the 
ancient city of Lincoln are divided (as most of my 
readers know) between the dwellers on the hill, and in 
the valley. This marked distinction formed an obvious 
division between the boys who lived above (however 
brought together in a common school) and the boys 
whose paternal residence was on the plain ; a sufficient 
cause of hostility, in the code of these young Grotiuses. 
My father had been a leading Mountaineer ; and would 
still maintain the general superiority, in skill and hardi- 
hood, of the Above Boys (his own faction) over the 
Beloiv Boys (so were they called), of which party his 
contemporary had been a chieftain. Many and hot 
were the skirmishes on this topic, — the only one upon 
which the old gentleman was ever brought out — and 
bad blood bred ; even sometimes almost to the recom- 
mencement (so I expected) of actual hostihties. But 
my father, who scorned to insist upon advantages, 
generally contrived to turn the conversation upon some 
adroit by-commendation of the old Minster; in the 
general preference of which, before all other cathedrals 
in the island, the dweller on the hill, and the plain- 
born, could meet on a conciliating level, and lay down 
their less important differences. Once only I saw the 
old gentleman really ruffled, and I remembered with 
anguish the thought that came over me : " Perhaps he 
will never come here again." He had been pressed to 
take another plate of the viand, which I have already 
mentioned as the indispensable concomitant of his visits. 

He had refused with a resistance amounting to rigor 

when my aunt, an old Lincolnian, but who had some- 



272 POOR RELATIONS. 

thing of this, in common with my cousin Bridget, that 
she would sometimes press civility out of season, — 
uttered the following memorable application, — " Do 
take another slice, Mr. Billet, for you do not get pud- 
ding every day." The old gentleman said nothing at 
the time, — but he took occasion in the course of the 
evening, when some argument had intervened between 
them, to utter with an emphasis which chilled the com- 
pany, and which chills me now as I write it — " Wom- 
an, you are superannuated ! " John Billet did not 
survive long, after the digesting of this affront ; but he 
survived long enough to assure me that peace was 
actually restored I and, if I remember aright, another 
pudding was discreetly substituted in the place of that 
which had occasioned the offence. He died at the 
Mint (anno 1781), where he had long held, what he 
accounted, a comfortable independence ; and with five 
pounds, fourteen shillings, and a penny, which were 
found in his escrutoire after his decease, left the world, 
blessing God that he had enough to bury him, and that 
he had never been obliged to any man for a sixpence. 
This was — a Poor Relation. 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND . READING. 273 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 

To mind the inside of a book is to entertain one's self wth the forced 
product of another man's brain. Now I think a man of quality and breed- 
ing may be much amused with the natural sprouts of his own. — Lord 
Foppington in the Relapse. 

An ingenious acquaintance of my own was so much 
struck with this bright sally of his Lordship, that he 
has left off reading altogether, to the great improve- 
ment of his originality. At the hazard of losing some 
credit on this head, I must confess that I dedicate no 
inconsiderable portion of my time to other people's 
thoughts. I dream away my life in others' specu- 
lations. I love to lose myself in «4iier..men's minds. 
When I am not walking, I am reading ; I cannot sit 
and think. Books think for me. 

I have no repugnances. Shaftesbury is not too 
genteel for me, nor Jonathan Wild too low. I can 
read anything which I call a hook. There are things 
in that shape which I cannot allow for such. 

In this catalogue of hooks which are no hooks — 
hihlia a-hihlia — I reckon Court Calendars, Directories, 
Pocket-Books, Draught Boards, bound and lettered on 
the back. Scientific Treatises, Almanacs, Statutes at 
Large ; the works of Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Beat- 
tie, Soame Jenyns, and generally, all those volumes 
which " no gentleman's library should be without ; " 
the Histories of Flavins Josephus (that learned Jew), 
and Paley's Moral Philosophy. With these exceptions, 
I can read almost anything. I bless my stars for a 
taste so catholic, so unexcluding. 

VOL. III. 18 



274 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 

I confess that it moves my spleen to see these 
things in hooks' clothing perched upon shelves, like 
false saints, usurpers of true shrines, intruders into the 
sanctuary, thrusting out the legitimate occupants. To 
reach down a well-bound semblance of a volume, and 
hope it some kind-hearted playbook, then, opening 
what " seem its leaves," to come bolt upon a withering 
Population Essay. To expect a Steele, or a Farquhar, 
and find — Adam Smith. To view a well-arranged 
assortment of blockheaded Encyclopasdias (Anglicanas 
or Metropolitanas) set out in an array of russia, or 
morocco, when a tithe of that good leather would com- 
fortably reclothe my shivering folios ; would renovate 
Paracelsus himself, and enable old Raymund Lully to 
look like himself again in the world. I never see these 
impostors, but I long to strip them, to warm my ragged 
veterans in their spoils. 

To be strono'-backed and neat-bound is the desidera- 
tum of a volume. Magnificence comes after. This, 
when it can be afforded, is not to be lavished upon 
all kinds of books indiscriminately. I would not dress 
a set of Magazines, for instance, in full suit. The 
dishabille, or half-binding (with russia backs ever) 
is our costume. A Shakspeare, or a Milton (unless 
the first editions), it were mere foppery to trick out in 
gay apparel. The possession of them confers no dis- 
tinction. The exterior of them (the things themselves 
being so common), strange to say, raises no sweet emo- 
tions, no tickling sense of property in the owner. 
Thomson's Seasons, again,, looks best (I maintain it) 
a little torn, and dog's-eared. How beautifuil to a 
genuine lover of reading are the sullied leaves, and 
worn-out appearance, nay the very odor (beyond rus- 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND EEADING. 275 

sia), if we would not forget kind feelings in fastidious- 
ness, of an old " Circulating Library " Tom Jones, or 
Vicar of Wakefield ! How they speak of the thousand 
thumbs that have turned over their pages with delight ! 
— of the lone sempstress, whom they may have cheered 
(milliner, or harder-working mantua-maker) after her 
long day's needle-toil, running far into midnight, when 
she has snatched an hour, ill spared from sleep to steep 
her cares, as in some Lethean cup, in spelling out their 
enchanting contents ! Who would have them a whit 
less soiled ? What better condition could we desire to 
see them in ? 

Li some respects the better a book is, the less it de- 
mands jfrom binding. Fielding, Smollett, Sterne, and 
all that class of perpetually self-reproductive volumes — 
Great Nature's Stereotypes — we see them individually 
perish with less regret, because we know the copies of 
them to be " eteme." But where a book is at once 
both good and rare — where the individual is almost 
the species, and when that perishes, 

We know not where is that Promethean torch 
That can its light relumine — 

such a book, for instance, as the Life of the Duke of 
Newcastle, by his Duchess — no casket is rich enough, 
no casing sufficiently durable, to honor and keep safe 
such a jewel. 

Not only rare volumes of this description, which 
seem hopeless ever to be reprinted ; but old editions 
of writers, such as Sir Philip Sydney, Bishop Taylor, 
Milton in his prose works. Fuller — of whom we have 
reprints, yet the books themselves, though they go 
about, and are talked of here and there, we know, 
have not endenizened themselves (nor possibly ever 



276 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND BEADING. 

will) in the national heart, so as to become stock books 
— it is good to possess these in durable and costly 
covers. I do not care for a First Folio of Shakspeare. 
I rather prefer the common editions of Rowe and Ton- 
son, without notes, and with plates^ which, being so 
execrably bad, serve as maps, or modest remembran- 
cers, to the text ; and without pretending to any sup- 
posable emulation with it, are so much better than the 
Shakspeare gallery engraviyigs^ which did. I have a 
community of feeling with my countrymen about his 
Plays, and I like those editions of him best, which have 
been oftenest tumbled about and handled. On the 
contrary, I cannot read Beaumont and Fletcher but in 
Folio. The Octavo editions are painful to look at. I 
have no sympathy with them. If they were as much 
read as the current editions of the other poet, I should 
prefer them in that shape to the older one. I do not 
know a more heartless sight than the reprint of the 
Anatomy of Melancholy. What need was there of 
unearthing the bones of that fantastic old great man, to 
expose them in a windingsheet of the newest fashion 
to modern censure ? what hapless stationer could dream 
of Burton ever becoming popular ? — The wretched 
Malone could not do worse, when he bribed the sexton 
of Stratford church to let him whitewash the painted 
effigy of old Shakspeare, which stood there, in rude but 
lively fashion depicted, to the very color of the cheek, 
the eye, the eyebrow, hair, the very dress he used to 
wear — the only authentic testimony we had, however 
imperfect, of these curious parts and parcels of him. 
They covered him over with a coat of white paint. 
By , if I had been a justice of peace for Warwick- 
shire, I would have clapt both commentator and sexton 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 277 

fast in the stocks, for a pair of meddling sacrilegious 
varlets. * 

I think I see them at their work — these sapient 
trouble-tombs. 

Shall I be thought fantastical, if I confess, that the 
names of some of our poets sound sweeter, and have a 
finer relish to the ear — to mine, at least — than that 
of Milton or of Shakspeare ? It may be, that the latter 
are more staled and rung upon in common discourse. 
The sweetest names, and which carry a perfume in the 
mention, are. Kit Marlowe, Drayton, Drummond of 
Hawthornden, and Cowley. 

Much depends upon when a.nd^here you read a book. 
In the five or six impatient minutes, before the dinner 
is quite ready, who would think of taking up the Fairy 
Queen for a stopgap, or a volume of Bishop Andrewes's 
sermons ? 

Milton almost requires a solemn service of music to 
be played before you enter upon him. But he brings 
his music, to which, who listens, had need bring docile 
thoughts, and purged ears. 

Winter evenings — the world shut out — with less 
of ceremony the gentle Shakspeare enters. At such a 
season, the Tempest, or his own Winter's Tale — 

These two poets you cannot avoid reading aloud — 
to yourself, or (as it chances) to some single person 
listening. More than one — and it degenerates into an 
audience. 

Books of quick interest, that hurry on for incidents, 
are for the eye to glide over only. It will not do 
to read them out. I could never listen to even the 
better kind of modem novels without extreme irk- 
someness. 



278 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 

A newspaper, read out, is intolerable. In some of 
the bank offices it is the custom (to save so much indi- 
vidual time) for one of the clerks — who is the best 
scholar — to commence upon the Times, or the Chron- 
icle, and recite its entire contents aloud, pro bono pub- 
lico. With every advantage of lungs and elocution, 
the effect is singularly vapid. In barbers' shops and 
public-houses a fellow will get up and spell out a par- 
agraph, which he communicates as some discoA^ery. 
Another follows with Ms selection. So the entire jour- 
nal transpires at length by piecemeal. Seldom-readers 
are slow readers, and, without this expedient, no one in 
the company would probably ever travel through the 
contents of a whole paper. 

Newspape'rs always excite curiosity. No one ever 
lays one down without a feeling of disappointment. 

What an eternal time that gentleman in black, at 
Nando's, keeps the paper ! I am sick of hearing the 
waiter bawling out incessantly, " The Chronicle is in 
hand. Sir." 

Coming into an inn at night — having ordered your 
supper — what can be more delightful than to find 
lying in the window-seat, left there time out of mind by 
the carelessness of some former guest, — two or three 
numbers of the old Town and Country Magazine, with 
its amusing tete-d-tete pictures — " The Royal Lover 

and Lady G : " " The Melting Platonic and the 

old Beau," — and such-like antiquated scandal? Would 
you exchange it — at that time, and in that place — for 
a better book ? 

Poor Tobin, who latterly fell blind, did not regret it 
so much for the weightier kinds of reading — the Para- 
dise Lost, or Comus, he could have read to him — but 



DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 279 

he missed the pleasure of skimming over with his own 
eye a magazine, or a light pamphlet. 

I should not care to be caught in the serious avenues 
of some cathedral alone, and reading Candide. 

I do not remember a more whimsical surprise than 
having been once detected — by a familiar damsel — 
reclined at my ease upon the grass, on Primrose Hill 
(her Cythera), reading Pamela. There was nothing 
in the book to make a man seriously ashamed at the 
exposure ; but as she seated herself down by me, and 
seem.ed determined to read in company, I could have 
wished it had been — any other book. We read on 
very sociably for a few pages ; and, not finding the au- 
thor much to her taste, she got up, and — went away. 
Gentle casuist, I leave it to thee to conjecture, whether 
the blush (for there was one between us) was the 
property of the nymph or the swain in this dilemma. 
From me^j-ou shall never get the secret. 

I am not much a friend to out-of-doors reading. I 
cannot settle my spirits to it. I knew a Unitarian 
minister, who was generally to be seen upon Snow Hill 
(as yet Skinner's Street was not), between the hours of 
ten and eleven in the morning, studying a volume of 
Lardner. I own this to have been a strain of abstrac- 
tion beyond my reach. I used to admire how he sidled 
along, keeping clear of secular contacts. An illiterate 
encounter with a porter's knot, or a bread-basket, 
would have quickly put to flight all the theology I 
am master of, and have left me worse than indiflPerent 
to the five points. 

There is a class of street-readers, whom I can never 
contemplate without aflPection — the poor gentry, who, 
not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a 



280 DETACHED THOUGHTS ON BOOKS AND READING. 

little learning at the open stalls — the owner, with his 
hard eye, casting envious looks at them all the while, 
and thinking when they will have done. Venturing 
tenderly, page after page, expecting every moment 
when he shall interpose his interdict, and yet unable 
to deny themselves the gratification, they " snatch a 

fearful joy." Martin B , in this way, by daily 

fragments, got through two volumes of Clarissa, when 
the stall-keeper damped his laudable ambition, by, ask- 
ing him (it was in his younger days) whether he meant 
to purchase the work. M. declares, that under no 
circumstance in his life did he ever peruse a book with 
half the satisfaction which he took in those uneasy 
snatches. A quaint poetess of our day has moralized 
upon this subject in two very touching but homely 
stanzas. 



I saw a boy with eager eye 

Open a book upon a stall, 

And read, as he'd devour it all; 

Which when the stall-man did espy, 

Soon to the boy I heard him call, 

" You Sir, you never buy a book, 

Therefore in one you shall not look." 

The boy pass'd slowly on, and with a sigh 

He wish'd he never had been taught to read. 

Then of the old churl's books he should have had no need. 

Of sufferings the poor have many, 

Which never can the rich annoy : 

1 soon perceived another boy. 

Who look'd as if he had not any 

Food, for that day at least, — enjoy 

The sight of cold meat in a tavern larder. 

This boy's case, then thought I, is surely harder. 

Thus hungry, longing, thus without a penny. 

Beholding choice of dainty-dressed meat: 

No wonder if he wish he ne'er had learn'd to eat. 



STAGE ILLUSION. 281 



STAGE ILLUSION. 



A PLAY is said to be well or ill acted, in proportion 
to the scenical illusion produced. Whether such illu- 
sion can in any case be perfect, is not the question. 
The nearest approach to it, we are told, is, when the 
actor appears wholly unconscious of the presence of 
spectators. In tragedy — in all which is to affect the 
feelings — this undivided attention to his stage busi- 
ness seems indispensable. Yet it is, in fact, dispensed 
with every day by our cleverest tragedians ; and while 
these references to an audience, in the shape of rant or 
sentiment, are not too frequent or palpable, a sufficient 
quantity of illusion for the purposes of dramatic interest 
may be said to be produced in spite of them. But, 
tragedy apart, it may be inquired whether, in certain 
characters in comedy, especially those which are a little 
extravagant, or which involve some notion repugnant 
to the moral sense, it is not a proof of the highest skill 
in the comedian when, without absolutely appealing to 
an audience, he keeps up a tacit understanding with 
them ; and makes them, unconsciously to themselves, a 
party in the scene. The utmost nicety is required in 
the mode of doing this ; but we speak only of the great 
artists in the profession. 

The most mortifying infirmity in human nature, to 
feel in ourselves, or to contemplate in another, is, per- 
haps, cowardice. To see a coward done to the life upon 
a stage would produce anything but mirth. Yet we 
most of us remember Jack Bannister's cowards. Could 
anything be more agreeable, more pleasant ? We loved 



282 STAGE ILLUSION. 

the rogues. How was this effected but by the exquisite 
art of the actor in a perpetual sub-insinuation to us, 
the spectators, even in the extremity of the shaking 
fit, that he was not half such a coward as we took him 
for ? We saw all the common symptoms of the malady 
upon him ; the quivering lip, the cowering knees, the 
teeth chattering ; and could have sworn " that man 
was frightened." But we forgot all the while — or 
kept it almost a secret to ourselves — that he never 
once lost his self-possession ; that he let out by a thou- 
sand droll looks and gestures — meant at us, and not at 
all supposed to be visible to his fellows in the scene, 
that his confidence in his own resources had never once 
deserted him. Was this a genuine picture of a cow- 
ard ? or not rather a likeness, which the clever artist 
contrived to palm upon us instead of an original ; while 
we secretly connived at the delusion for the purpose of 
greater pleasure, than a more genuine counterfeiting of 
the imbecility, helplessness, and utter self-desertion, 
which we know to be concomitants of cowardice in real 
life, could have given us ? 

Why are misers so hateful in the world, and so 
endurable on the stage, but because the skilful actor, 
by a sort of sub-reference, rather than direct appeal to 
us, disarms the character of a great deal of its odious- 
ness, by seeming to engage our compassion for the in- 
secure tenure by which he holds his money-bags and 
parchments ? By this subtle vent half of the hateful- 
ness of the character — the self-closeness with which in 
real life it coils itself up from the sympathies of men — 
evaporates. The miser becomes sympathetic ; ^. e. is 
no genuine miser. Here again a diverting likeness is 
substituted for a very disagreeable reality. 



STAGE ILLUSION. 283 

Spleen, irritability — the pitiable infirmities of old 
men, wliich produce only pain to behold in the realities, 
counterfeited upon a stage, divert not altogether for the 
comic appendages to them, but in part from an inner 
conviction that they are being acted before us ; that a 
likeness only is going on, and not the thing itself. 
They please by being done under the life, or beside 
it ; not to the life. When Gattie acts an old man, is 
he angry indeed?- or only a pleasant counterfeit, just 
enough of a likeness to recognize, without pressing upon 
us the uneasy sense of a reality ? 

Comedians, paradoxical as it may seem, may be too 
natural. It was the case with a late actor. Nothing 
could be more earnest or true than the manner of Mr. 
Emery; this told excellently in his Tyke, and char- 
acters of a tragic cast. But when he carried the same 
rigid exclusiveness of attention to the stage business, 
and wilful blindness and oblivion of everything before 
the curtain into his comedy, it produced a harsh and 
dissonant effect. He was out of keeping with the rest 
of the Personce Dramatis. There was as little link 
between him and them, as betwixt himself and the 
audience. He was a third estate, dry, repulsive, and 
unsocial to all. Individually considered, his execution 
was masterly. But comedy is not this unbending 
thing ; for this reason, that the same degree of credi- 
bility is not required of it as to serious scenes. The 
degrees of credibility demanded to the two things, may 
be illustrated by the different sort of truth which we 
expect when a man tells us a mournful or a merry 
story. If we suspect the former of falsehood in any 
one tittle, we reject it altogether. Our tears refiise to 
flow at a suspected imposition. But the teller of a 



284 STAGE ILLUSION. 

mirthfiil tale has latitude allowed liim. We are con- 
tent with less than absolute truth. 'Tis the same with 
dramatic illusion. We confess we love in comedy to 
see an audience naturalized behind the scenes, taken 
into the interest of the drama, welcomed as by-standers 
however. There is something ungracious in a comic 
actor holding himself aloof from all participation or 
concern with those who are come to be diverted by 
him. Macbeth must see the dagger, and no ear but his 
own be told of it ; but an old fool in farce may think 
he sees something, and by conscious words and looks 
express it, as plainly as he can speak, to pit, box, and 
gallery. When an impertinent in tragedy, an Osric, 
for instance, breaks in upon the serious passions of the 
scene, we approve of the contempt with which he is 
treated. But when the pleasant impertment of comedy, 
in a piece purely meant to give delight, and raise mirth 
out of whimsical perplexities, worries the studious man 
with taking up his leisure, or making his house his 
home, the same sort of contempt expressed (however 
natural^ would destroy the balance of delight in the 
spectators. To make the intrusion comic, the actor 
who plays the annoyed man must a little desert 
nature ; he must, in short, be thinking of the audience, 
and express only so much dissatisfaction and peevish- 
ness as is consistent with the pleasure of comedy. In 
other words, his perplexity must seem half put on. If 
he repel che intruder with the sober set. face of a man 
in earnest, and more especially if he deliver his ex- 
postulations in a tone which in the world must neces- 
sarily provoke a duel ; his real-life manner will destroy 
the whimsical and purely dramatic existence of the 
other character (which to render it comic demands 



TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 285' 

an antagonist comicalitj on the part of the character 
opposed to it), and convert what was meant for mirth, 
rather than behef, into a downright piece of imperti- 
nence indeed, which would raise no diversion in us, but 
rather stir pain, to see inflicted in earnest upon any 
unworthy person. A very judicious actor (in most of 
his parts) seems to have fallen into an error of this sort 
in his playing with Mr. Wrench in the farce of Free 
and Easy. 

Many instances would be tedious ; these may suffice 
to show that comic acting at least does not always 
demand from the performer that strict abstraction from 
all reference to an audience which is exacted of it ; 
but that in some cases a sort of compromise may take 
place, and all the purposes of dramatic delight be at- 
tained by a judicious understanding, not too openly 
announced, between the ladies and gentlemen — on 
both sides of the curtain. 



TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 

JoYOUSEST of once embodied spirits, whither at 
length hast thou flown ? to what genial region are 
we permitted to conjecture that thou hast flitted ? 

Art thou sowing thy wild oats yet (the harvest 
time was still to come with thee) upon casual sands 
of Avernus ? or art thou enacting Rover (as we would 
gladlier think) by wandering Elysian streams ? 

This mortal frame, while thou didst play thy brief 



286 TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 

antics amongst us, was in truth anything but a prison 
to thee, as the vain Platonist dreams of this body tc 
be no better than a county jail, forsooth, or some 
house of durance vile, whereof the five senses are 
the fetters. Thou knewest better than to be in 9 
hurry to cast off those gyves ; and had notice to quit. 
I fear, before thou wert quite ready to abandon thi^ 
fleshy tenement. It was thy Pleasure-House, thy 
Palace of Dainty Devices ; thy Louvre, or thy White- 
Hall. 

What new mysterious lodgings dost thou tenant 
now ? or when may we expect thy aerial house- 
warming ? 

Tartarus we know, and we have read of the Blessed 
Shades ; now cannot I intelligibly fancy thee in either. 

Is it too much to hazard a conjecture, that (as the 
schoolmen admitted a receptacle apart for Patriarchs 
and un-chrisom babes) there may exist — not far per- 
chance from that storehouse of all vanities, which 
Milton saw in vision — a Limbo somewhere for 
Players ? and that 

Up thither like aerial vapors fly 

Both all Stage things, and all that in Stage things 

Built their fond hopes of glory, or lasting fame ? 

All the unaccomplished works of Authors' hands, 

Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed, 

Damn'd upon earth, fleet thither — 

Play, Opera, Farce, with all their trumpery. 

There, by the neighboring moon (by some not im- 
properly supposed thy Regent Planet upon earth), 
mayst thou not still be acting thy managerial pranks, 
great disembodied Lessee ? but Lessee still, and still a 
manager. 



TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 287 

In Green Rooms, impervious to mortal eye, the muse 
behoMs thee wielding posthumous empire. 

Thin ghosts of Figurantes (never plump on earth) 
circle thee in endlessly, and still their song is Fie on 
sinful Fantasy I 

Magnificent were thy capriceios on this globe of 
earth, Robert William Elliston ! for as yet we 
know not thy new name in heaven. 

It irks me to think, that, stript of thy regalities, thou 
shouldst ferry over, a poor forked shade, in crazy Sty- 
gian wherry. Methinks I hear the old boatman, pad- 
dling by the weedy wharf, with rancid voice, bawling 
" Sculls, Sculls ; " to which, with waving hand, and 
majestic action, thou deignest no reply, other than in 
two curt monosyllables, " No : Oars." 

But the laws of Pluto's kingdom know small differ- 
ence between king and cobbler ; manager and call- 
boy; and, if haply your dates of life were conter- 
minant, you are quietly taking your passage, cheek by 
cheek (O ignoble levelling of Death) vs^ith the shade 
of some recently departed candle-snuffer. 

But mercy ! what strippings, what tearing off of 
histrionic robes, and private vanities ! what denuda- 
tions to the bone, before the surly Ferryman will admit 
you to set a foot within his battered lighter. 

Crowns, sceptres ; shield, sword, and truncheon ; thy 
own coronation robes (for thou hast brought the whole 
property-man's wardrobe with thee, enough to sink a 
navy); the judge's ermine; the coxcomb's wig ; the 
snuffbox a la Foppingto7i^ — all must overboard, he 
positively swears, — and that Ancient Mariner brooks 
no denial ; for, since the tiresome monodrame of the 
old Thracian Harper, Charon, it is to be believed, hath 
shown small taste for theatricals. 



288 TO THE SHADE OF ELLISTON. 

Ay, now 'tis done. You are just boat-weight ; pura 
et puta anima. 

But, bless me, how little you look ! 

So shall we all look — kings and keysars — stripped 
for the last voyage. 

But the murky rogue pushes off. Adieu, pleasant, 
and thrice pleasant shade ! with my parting thanks for 
many a heavy hour of life lightened by thy harmless 
extravaganzas, public or domestic. 

Bhadamanthus, who tries the lighter causes below, 
leaving to his two brethren the heavy calendars, — hon- 
est Rhadamanth, always partial to players, weighing 
their parti-colored existence here upon earth, — making 
account of the few foibles, that may have shaded thy 
real life^ as we call it, (though, substantially, scarcely 
less a vapor than thy idlest vagaries upon the boards of 
Drury,) as but of so many echoes, natural repercus- 
sions, and results to be expected from the assumed ex- 
travagances of thy secondary or moch life, nightly upon 
a stage, — after a lenient castigation, with rods lighter 
than of those Medusean ringlets, but just enough to 
"whip the offending Adam out of thee," shall courte- 
ously dismiss thee at the right-hand gate — the o. p. 
side of Hades — that conducts to masks and merry- 
makings in the Theatre Boyal of Proserpine. 

PLAUDIT 0, ET VALET 0. 



ELLISTONIANA. 289 



ELLISTONIANA. 

My acquaintance with the pleasant creature, whose 
loss we all deplore, was but slight. 

My first introduction to E., which afterwards ripened 
into an acquaintance a little on this side of intimacy, 
was over a counter in the Leamington Spa Library, 
then newly entered upon by a branch of his family. 
E., whom nothing misbecame to auspicate, I sup- 
pose, the filial concern, and set it a-going with a lustre, 
— was serving in person two damsels fair, who had come 
into the shop ostensibly to inquire for some new publi- 
cation, but in reality to have a sight of the illustrious 
shopman, hoping some conference. With what an air 
did he reach down the volume, dispassionately giving 
his opinion of the worth of the work in question, and 
launching out into a dissertation on its comparative 
merits with those of certain publications of a similar 
stamp, its rivals ! his enchanted customers fairly hang- 
ing on his lips, subdued to their authoritative sentence. 
So have I seen a gentleman in comedy acting the shop- 
man. So Lovelace sold his gloves in King Street. I 
admired the histrionic art, by which he contrived to 
carry clean away every notion of disgrace, from the 
occupation he had so generously submitted to ; and 
from that hour I judged him, with no after repentance, 
to be a person with whom it would be a felicity to be 
more acquainted. 

To descant upon his merits as a, Comedian would 
be superfluous. With his blended private and profes- 
sional habits alone I have to do ; that harmonious 

VOL. III. 19 



290 ELLISTONIANA. 

fusion of the manners of tlie player into those of every- 
day Hfe, which brought the stage boards into streets, 
and dining-parlors, and kept up the play when the 
play was ended. " I like Wrench," a friend was say- 
ing to him one day, " because he is the same, natural, 
easy creature, on the stage, that he is off.'''' " My case 
exactly," retorted Elliston, — with a charming forget- 
fulness, that the converse of a proposition does not al- 
ways lead to the same conclusion, — "I am the same 
person off the stage that I am on.''^ The inference, at 
first sight, seems identical; but examine it a little, and 
it confesses only, that the one performer was never, 
and the other always, acting. 

And in truth this was the charm of Elliston's private 
deportment. You had spirited performance always 
going on before your eyes, with nothing to pay. As 
where a monarch takes up his casual abode for a night, 
the poorest hovel which he honors by his sleeping in it, 
becomes ipso facto for that time a palace ; so wherever 
Elliston walked, sat, or stood still, there was the the- 
atre. He carried about with him his pit, boxes, and 
galleries, and set up his portable playhouse at corners of 
streets, and in the market-places. Upon flintiest pave- 
ments he trod the boards still ; and if his theme chanced 
to be passionate, the green baize carpet of tragedy 
spontaneously rose beneath his feet. Now this was 
hearty, and showed a love for his art. So Apelles al- 
ways painted — in thought. So G. D. always poetizes. 
I hate a lukewarm artist. I have known actors — and 
some of them of Elliston's own stamp — who shall have 
agreeably been amusing you in the part of a rake or a 
coxcomb, through the two or three hours of their dra- 
matic existence : but no sooner does the curtain fall 



ELLISTONIANA. 291 

with its leaden clatter, but a spirit of lead seems to 
seize on all their faculties. They emerge sour, morose 
persons, intolerable to their families, servants, &c. 
Another shall have been expanding your heart v^ith 
generous deeds and sentiments, till it even beats with 
yearnings of universal sympathy ; you absolutely long 
to go home and do some good action. The play seems 
tedious, till you can get fairly out of the house, and 
realize your laudable intentions. At length the final 
bel] rings, and this cordial representative of all that is 
amiable in human breasts steps forth — a miser. Ellis- 
ton was more of a piece. Did he play Ranger ? and 
did Ranger fill the general bosom of the town with satis- 
faction ? why should he not be Ranger, and diffuse the 
same cordial satisfaction among his private circles? with 
his temperament, his animal spirits, his good-nature, his 
follies perchance, could he do better than identify him- 
self with his impersonation ? Are we to like a pleasant 
rake, or coxcomb, on the stage, and give ourselves airs 
of aversion for the identical character, presented to us in 
actual life ? or what would the performer have gained 
by divesting himself of the impersonation ? Could the 
man Elliston have been essentially different from his 
part, even if he had avoided to reflect to us studiously, 
in private circles, the airy briskness, the forwardness, 
and scape-goat trickeries of his prototype ? 

" But there is something not natural in this everlast- 
ing acting ; we want the real man." 

Are you quite sure that it is not the man himself, 
whom you cannot, or will not see, under some adventi- 
tious trappings, which, nevertheless, sit not at all incon- 
sistently upon him ? What if it is the nature of some 
men to be highly artificial ? The fault is least repre- 



292 ELLISTONIANA. 

hensible in players. Gibber was his own Foppington, 
with almost as much wit as Vanbrugh could add to it. 

" My conceit of his person," — it is Ben Jonson 
speaking of Lord Bacon, — " was never increased tow- 
ards him by his "place or honors. But I have, and do 
reverence him for the greatness., that was only proper 
to himself; in that he seemed to me ever one of the 
greatest men, that had been in many ages. In his ad- 
versity I ever prayed that Heaven would give him 
strength ; for greatness he could not want." 

The quality here commended was scarcely less con- 
spicuous in the subject of these idle reminiscences than 
in my Lord Verulam. Those who have imagined that 
an unexpected elevation to the direction of a great 
London Theatre affected the consequence of Elliston, 
or at all changed his nature, knew not the essential 
greatness of the man whom they disparage. It was my 
fortune to encounter him near St. Dunstan's Church 
(which, with its punctual giants, is now no more than 
dust and a shadow), on the morning of his election to 
that high office. Grasping my hand with a look of 
significance, he only uttered, — " Have you heard the 
news ? " — then, with another look following up the 
blow, he subjoined, " I am the future Manager of 
Drury Lane Theatre." Breathless as he saw me, he 
stayed not for congratulation or reply, but mutely 
stalked away, leaving me to chew upon his new-blown 
dignities at leisure. In fact, nothing could be said to 
it. Expressive silence alone could muse his praise. 
This was in his great style. 

But was he less great., (be witness, O ye Powers of 
Equanimity, that supported in the ruins of Garthage 
the consular exile, and more recently transmuted, for 



ELLISTONIANA. 293 

a more illustrious exile, the barren constableship of 
Elba into an image of Imperial France,) when, in 
melancholy after-years, again, much near the same 
spot, I met him, when that sceptre had been wrested 
from his hand, and his dominion was curtailed to the 
petty managership, and part proprietorship, of the small 
Olympic, Ms Elba f He still played nightly upon the 
boards of Drury, but in parts, alas ! allotted to him, 
not magnificently distributed by him. Waiving his 
great loss as nothing, and magnificently sinking the 
sense of fallen material grandeur in the more liberal 
resentment of depreciations done to his more lofty in- 
tellectual pretensions, " Have you heard " (his custom- 
ary exordium) — " have you heard," said he, " how 
they treat me ? they put me in comedy.'''' Thought I — 
but his finger on his lips forbade any verbal interrup- 
tion — " where could they have put you better ? " 
Then, after a pause — " Where I formerly played 
Romeo, I now play Mercutio," — and so again he 
stalked away, neither staying, nor caring for, responses. 

O, it was a rich scene, — but Sir A C , the 

best of story-tellers and surgeons, who mends a lame 
narrative almost as well as he ..sets a fracture, alone 
could do justice to it, — that I was a witness to, in the 
tarnished room (that had once been green) of that 
same little Olympic. There, after his deposition from 
Imperial Drury, he substituted a throne. That Olym- 
pic Hill was his " highest heaven ; " himself " Jove in 
his chair." There he sat in state, while before him, on 
complaint of prompter, was brought for judgment — 
how shall I describe her ? — one of those little tawdry 
things that flirt at the tails of chorusses — a probationer 
for the town, in either of its senses — the per test little 



294 ELLISTONIANA. 

drab — a dirtj fringe and appendage of the lamps' 
smoke — who, it seems, on some disapprobation ex- 
pressed by a " highly respectable " audience, — had 
precipitately quitted her station on the boards, and 
withdrawn her small talents in disgust. 

"And how dare you," said her manager, — ^assum- 
ing a censorial severity, which would have crushed the 
confidence of a Vestris, and disarmed that beautiful 
Rebel herself of her professional caprices, — I verily 
believe, he thought her standing before him, — " how 
dare you. Madam, withdraw yourself, without a notice, 
from your theatrical duties ? " "I was hissed. Sir." 
" And you have the presumption to decide upon the 
taste of the town?" "I don't know that. Sir, but I 
will never stand to be hissed," was the subjoinder of 
young Confidence, — when gathering up his features 
into one significant mass of wonder, pity, and expostu- 
latory mdignation — in a lesson never to have been 
lost upon a creature less forward than she who stood 
before him, — his words were these : " They have 
hissed we." 

'Twas the identical argument a fortiori^ which the 
son of Peleus uses to Lycaon trembling under his 
lance, to persuade him to take his destiny with a good 
grace. " I too am mortal." And it is to be believed 
that in both cases the rhetoric missed of its application, 
for want of a proper understanding with the faculties of 
the respective recipients. 

" Quite an Opera pit," he said to me, as he was 
courteously conducting me over the benches of his 
Surrey Theatre, the last retreat, and recess, of his 
every-day waning grandeur. 

Those who knew Elliston, will know the manner in 



ELLISTONIANA. 295 

which he pronounced the latter sentence of the few 
words I am about to record. One proud day to me he 
took his roast mutton with us in the Temple^ to which 
I had superadded a prehminary haddock. After a 
rather plentifiil partaking of the meagre banquet, not 
unrefreshed with the humbler sort of liquors, I made a 
sort of apology for the humility of the fare, observing 
that for my own part I never ate but one dish at 
dinner. " I too never eat but one thing at dinner," — 
was his reply, — then, after a pause, — " reckoning fish 
as nothing." The manner was all. It was as if by 
one peremptory sentence he had decreed the annihila- 
tion of all the savory esculents, which the pleasant and 
nutritious-food-giving Ocean pours forth upon poor 
humans from her watery bosom. This was greatness^ 
tempered with considerate tenderness to the feelings of 
his scanty but welcoming entertainer. 

G-reat wert thou in thy life, Robert William Ellis- 
ton ! and not lessened in thy death, if report speak 
truly, which says that thou didst direct that thy mortal 
remains should repose under no inscription but one of 
pure Latinity. Classical was thy bringing up ! and 
beautiful was the feeling on thy last bed, which, con- 
necting the man with the boy, took thee back to thy 
latest exercise of imagination, to the days when, un- 
dreaming of Theatres and Managerships, thou wert a 
scholar, and an early ripe one, under the roofs builded 
by the munificent and pious Colet. For thee the 
Pauline Muses weep. In elegies, that shall silence this 
crude prose, they shall celebrate thy praise. 



296 THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 



• THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 

1 AM fond of passing my vacations (I believe I have 
said so before) at one or other of the Universities. 
Next to these my choice would fix me at some woody 
spot, such as the neighborhood of Henley affords in 
abundance, on the banks of my beloved Thames. But 
somehow or other my cousin contrives to wheedle me, 
once in three or four seasons, to a watering-place. Old 
attachments cling to her in spite of experience. We 
have been dull at Worthing one summer, duller at 
Brighton another, dullest at Eastbourn a third, and are 
at this moment doing dreary penance at — Hastings ! 
— and all because we were happy many years ago for 
a brief week at Margate. That was our first seaside 
experiment, and many circumstances combined to make 
it the most agreeable holiday of my life. We had 
neither of us seen the sea, and we had never been from 
home so long together in company. 

Can I forget 'thee, thou old Margate Hoy, with thy 
weather-beaten, sunburnt captain, and his rough ac- 
commodations, — ill exchanged for the foppery and 
freshwater niceness of the modern steam-packet ? To 
the winds and waves thou committedst thy goodly 
freightage, and didst ask no aid of magic fumes, and 
spells, and boiling caldrons. With the gales of heaven 
thou wentest swimmingly ; or, when it was their 
pleasure, stoodest still with sailor-like patience. Thy 
course was natural, not forced, as in a hotbed ; nor 
didst thou go poisoning the breath of ocean with sul- 
phureous smoke — a great sea chimera, chimneying 






THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 297 

and furnacing the deep ; or liker to that fire-god parch- 
mg up Scamander. 

Can I forget thy honest, yet slender crew, with their 
coy reluctant responses (yet to the suppression of any- 
thing like contempt) to the raw questions, which we of 
the great city would be ever and anon putting to them, 
as to the uses of this or that strange naval implement ? 
'Specially can I forget thee, thou happy medium, thou 
shade of refuge between us and them, conciliating inter- 
preter of their skill to our simplicity, comfortable am- 
bassador between sea and land ! — whose sailor-trousers 
did not more convincingly assure thee to be an adopted 
denizen of the former, than thy white cap, and whiter 
apron over them, with thy neat-figured practice in thy 
culinary vocation, bespoke thee to have been of inland 
nurture heretofore, — a master cook of Eastcheap ? 
How busily didst thou ply thy multifarious occupation, 
cook, mariner, attendant, chamberlain ; here, there, 
like another Ariel, flaming at once about all parts of 
the deck, yet with kindlier ministrations, — not to 
assist the tempest, but, as if touched with a kindred 
sense of our infirmities, to soothe the qualms which that 
untried motion might haply raise in our crude land- 
fancies. And when the o'erwashing billows drove us 
below deck, (for it was far gone in October, and we 
had stifi" and blowing weather,) how did thy ofiicious 
ministerings, still catering for our comfort, with cards, 
and cordials, and thy more cordial conversation, alle- 
viate the closeness and the confinement of thy else 
(truth to say) not very savory, nor very inviting, 
little cabin ? 

With these additaments to boot, we had on board a 
fellow-passenger, whose discourse in verity might have 



298 THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 

beguiled a longer voyage than we meditated, and have 
made mirth and wonder abound as far as the Azores. 
He was a dark, Spanish-complexioned young man, re- 
markably handsome, with an officer-like assurance, and 
an insuppressible volubility of assertion. He was, in 
fact, the greatest liar I had met with then- or since. 
He was none of your hesitating, half story-tellers (a 
most painful description of mortals) who go on sound- 
ing your belief, and only giving you as much as they 
see you can swallow at a time, — the nibbling pick- 
pockets of your patience, — but one who committed 
downright, daylight depredations upon his neighbor's 
faith. He did not stand shivering upon the brink, but 
was a hearty, thorough-paced liar, and plunged at once 
into the depths of your credulity. I partly believe, he 
made pretty sure of his company. Not many rich, not 
many wise, or learned, composed at that time the com- 
mon stowage of a Margate packet. We were, I am 
afraid, a set of as unseasoned Londoners (let our 
enemies give it a worse name) as Aldermanbury, or 
Watling Street, at that time of day could have supplied. 
There might be an exception or two among us, but I 
scorn to make any invidious distinctions among such a 
jolly, companionable ship's company, as those were 
whom I sailed with. Something too must be conceded 
to the Grenius Loci. Had the confident fellow told us 
half the legends on land, which he favored us with on 
the other element, I flatter myself the good sense of 
most of us would have revolted. But we were in a 
new world, with everything unfamiliar about us, and 
the time and place disposed us to the reception of any 
prodigious marvel whatsoever. Time has obliterated 
from my memory much of his wild fablings ; and the 



THE OLD M AEG ATE HOY. 299 

rest would appear but dull, as written, and to be read 
on shore. He had been aide-de-camp (among other 
rare accidents and fortunes) to a Persian Prince, and 
at one blow had stricken off the head of the King of 
Carimania on horseback. He, of course, married the 
Prince's daughter. I forget what unlucky turn in the 
politics of that court, combining with the loss of his 
consort, was the reason of his quitting Persia ; but, 
with the rapidity of a magician, he transported himself, 
along with his hearers, back to England, where we still 
found him in the confidence of great ladies. There 
was some story of a princess — Elizabeth, if I remem- 
ber — having intrusted to his care an extraordinary 
casket of jewels, upon some extraordinary occasion, — 
but, as I am not certain of the name or circumstance at 
this distance of time, I must leave it to the Royal 
daughters of England to settle the honor among them- 
selves in private. I cannot call to mind half his pleas- 
ant wonders ; but I perfectly remember, that in the 
course of his travels he had seen a phoenix ; and he 
obligingly undeceived us of the vulgar error, that there 
is but one of that species at a time, assuring us that 
they were not uncommon in some parts of Upper 
Egypt. Hitherto he had found the most implicit 
listeners. His dreaming fancies had transported us be- 
yond the "ignorant present." But when (still hardy- 
incf more and more in his triumphs over our simplicity) 
he went on to affirm that he had actually sailed through 
the legs of the Colossus at Rhodes, it really became 
necessary to make a stand. And here I must do justice 
to the good sense and intrepidity of one of our party, a 
youth, that had hitherto been one of his most deferen- 
tial auditors, who, from his recent reading, made bold 



SOO THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 

to assure tlie gentleman, that there must be some mis- 
take, as " the Colossus in question had been destroyed 
long since ; " to whose opinion, delivered with ail 
modesty, our hero was obliging enough to concede thus 
much, that " the figure was indeed a little damaged." 
This was the only opposition he met with, and it did 
not at all seem to stagger him, for he proceeded with 
his fables, which the same youth appeared to swallow 
with still more complacency than ever, — confirmed, 
as it were, by the extreme candor of that concession. 
With these prodigies he wheedled us on till we came in 
sight of the Reculvers, which one of our own company 
(having been the voyage before) immediately recog- 
nizing, and pointing out to us, was considered by us as 
no ordinary seaman. 

All this time sat upon the edge of the deck quite a 
different character. It was a lad, apparently very poor, 
very infirm, and very patient. His eye was ever on 
the sea, with a smile ; and, if he caught now and then 
some snatches of these wild legends, it was by accident, 
and they seemed not to concern him. The waves to 
him whispered more pleasant stories. He was as one^ 
being with us, but not of us. He heard the bell of 
dinner ring without stirring ; and when some of us 
pulled out our private stores — our cold meat and our 
salads, — he produced none, and seemed to want none. 
Only a solitary biscuit he had laid in ; provision for the 
one or two days and nights, to which these vessels then 
were oftentimes obliged to prolong their voyage. Upon 
a nearer acquaintance with him, which he seemed 
neither to court nor decline, we learned that he was 
going to Margate, with the hope of being admitted into 
the Infirmary there for sea-bathing. His disease was a 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 301 

scrofala, which appeared to have eaten all over him. 
He expressed great hopes of a cure ; and when we 
asked him, whether he had any friends where he was 
going, he replied " he had no friends." 

These pleasant, and some mournful passages with the 
first sight of the sea, cooperating with youth, and a 
sense of holidays, and out-of-door adventure, to me that 
had been pent up in populous cities for many months 
before, — have left upon my mind the fragrance as of 
summer days gone by, bequeathing nothing but their 
remembrance for cold and wintry hours to chew npon. 

Will it be thought a digression (it may spare some 
unwelcome comparisons) if I endeavor to account for 
the dissatisfaction which I have heard so many persons 
confess to have felt (as I did myself feel in part on this 
occasion) at the sight of the sea for the first time ? I 
think the reason usually given — referring to the in- 
capacity of actual objects for satisfying our preconcep- 
tions of them — scarcely goes deep enough into the 
question. Let the same person see a lion, an elephant, 
a monntain, for the first time in his life, and he shall 
perhaps feel himself a little mortified. The things do 
not fill up that space, which the idea of them seemed to 
take up in his mind. But they have still a correspond- 
ency to his first notion, and in time grow up to it, so as 
to produce a very similar impression ; enlarging them- 
selves (if I may say so) upon familiarity. But the sea 
remains a disappointment. Is it not, that in the latter 
we had expected to behold (absurdly, I grant, but, I 
am afraid, by the law of imagination, unavoidably) not 
a definite object, as those wild beasts, or that mountain 
compassable by the eye, but all the sea at once^ the 

COMMENSURATE ANTAGONIST OF THE EARTH ? I do 



302 THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 

not say we tell ourselves so mucli, but the craving of 
the mind is to be satisfied with nothing less. I will 
suppose the case of a young person of fifteen (as I then 
was) knowing nothing of the sea, but from description. 
He comes to it for the first time, — all that he has been 
readincr of it all his life, and that the most enthusiastic 
part of life, - — ail he has gathered from narratives of 
wandering seamen, — what he has gained from true 
voyages, and what he cherishes as credulously from ro- 
mance and poetry, — crowding their images, and exact- 
ing strange tributes from expectation. He thinks of 
the great deep, and of those who go down unto it ; of 
its thousand isles, and of the vast continents it washes ; 
of its receiving the mighty Plate, or Orellana, into its 
bosom, without disturbance, or sense of augmentation ; 
of Biscay swells, and the mariner, 

For many a day, and many a dreadful night, 
Incessant laboring round the stormy Cape ; 

of fatal rocks, and the " still-vexed Bermoothes ; " of 
great whirlpools, and the water-spout ; of sunken ships, 
and sumless treasures swallowed up in the unrestoring 
depths ; of fishes and quaint monsters, to which all 
that is terrible on earth 

Be but as buggs to frighten babes withal, 
Compared with the creatures in the sea's antral; 

of naked savages, and Juan Fernandez ; of pearls, 
and shells ; of coral beds, and of enchanted isles ; of 
mermaids' grots ; — 

I do not assert that in sober earnest he expects to be 
shown all these wonders at once, but he is under me 
tyranny of a mighty faculty, which haunts him with 



THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 303 

confused hints and shadows of all these ; and when the 
actual object opens first upon him, seen (in tame 
weather too, most likely) from our unromantic coasts, 
— a speck, a slip of sea- water, as it shows to him, — 
what can it prove but a very unsatisfying and even 
diminutive entertainment ? Or if he has come to it 
from the mouth of a river, was it much more than the 
river widening ? and, even out of sight of land, what 
had he but a flat watery horizon about him, nothing 
comparable to the vast o'er-curtaining sky, his familiar 
object, seen daily without dread or amazement ? — 
Who, in similar circumstances, has not been tempted to 
exclaim with Charoba, in the poem of Gebir, 

Is this the mighty ocean ? is this all f 

I love town, or country ; but this detestable Cinque 
Port is neither. I hate these scrubbed shoots, thrusting 
out their starved foliage from between the horrid fis- 
sures of dusty innutritions rocks ; which the amateur 
calls " verdure to the edge of the sea." I require 
woods, and they show me stunted coppices. I cry out 
for the water-brooks, and pant for fresh streams, and 
inland murmurs. I cannot stand all day on the naked 
beach, watching the capricious hues of the sea, shifting 
like the colors of a dying mullet. I am tired of look- 
ing out at the windows of this island-prison. I would 
fain retire into the interior of my cage. While I gaze 
upon the sea, I want to be on it, over it, across it. It 
binds me in with chains, as of iron. My thoughts are 
abroad. I should not so feel in Staffordshire. There 
is no home for me here. There is no sense of home 
at Hastings. It is a place of fugitive resort, an hete- 
rogeneous assemblage of sea-mews and stockbrokers, 



304 THE OLD MARGATE HOY. 

Amphitrites of tlie town, and misses that coquet witli 
the Ocean. If it were what it was in its primitive 
shape, and what it ought to have remained, a fair, 
honest fishing-town, and no more, it were something ; — • 
with a few stragghng fishermen's huts scattered about, 
artless as its chffs, and with their materials filched from 
them, it were something. I could abide to dwell with 
Meshech ; to assort with fisher-swains, and smugglers. 
There are, or I dream there are, many of this latter 
occupation here. Their faces become the place. I 
like a smuofo-ler. He is the only honest thief. He 
robs nothino; but the revenue, — an abstraction I never 
greatly cared about. I could go out with them in their 
mackerel boats, or about their less ostensible business, 
with some satisfaction. I can even tolerate those poor 
victims to monotony, who from day to day pace along 
the beach, in endless progress and recurrence, to watch 
their illicit countrymen, — townsfolk or brethren per- 
chance, — whistling to the sheathing and unsheathing 
of their cutlasses, (their only solace,) who, under the 
mild name of preventive service, keep up a legitimated 
civil warfare in the deplorable absence of a foreign one, 
to show their detestation of run hollands, and zeal for 
Old England. But it is the visitants from town, that 
come here to say that they have been here, with no 
more relish of the sea than a pond-perch or a dace 
might be supposed to have, that are my aversion. I 
feel like a foolish dace in these regions, and have as 
little toleration for myself here as for them. What 
can they want here ? if they had a true relish of 
the ocean, why have they brought all this land lug- 
gage with them? or why pitch their civilized tents 
in the desert? What mean these scanty book-rooms 



THE OLD MAEGATE HOY. 305 

— marine libraries as they entitle them — if the sea 
were, as they would have us believe, a book " to read 
strano;e matter in ? " what are their foolish concert- 
rooms, if they come, as they would fain be thought to 
do, to listen to the music of the waves ? All is false 
and hollow pretension. They come, because it is the 
fashion, and to spoil the nature of the place. They 
are, mostly, as I have said, stockbrokers ; but I have 
watched the better sort of them, — now and then, an 
honest citizen (of the old stamp), in the simplicity of 
his heart, shall bring down his wife and daughters, to 
taste the sea-breezes. I always know the date of their 
arrival. It is easy to see it in their countenance. A 
day or two they go wandering on the shingles, picking 
up cockle-shells, and thinking them great things ; but, 
in a poor week, imagination slackens : they begin to 
discover that cockles produce no pearls, and then — O 
then I — if I could interpret for the pretty creatures 
(I know they have not the courage to confess it them- 
selves), how gladly would they exchange their seaside 
rambles for a Sunday-walk on the greensward of their 
accustomed Twickenham meadows ! 

I would ask of one of these sea-charmed emigrants, 
who think they truly love the sea, with its wild usages, 
what would their feelings be, if some of the unsophis- 
ticated aborigines of this place, encouraged by their 
courteous questionings here, should venture, on the 
faith of such assured sympathy between them, to return 
the visit, and come up to see — London. I must 
imagine them with their fishing-tackle on their back, 
as we carry our town necessaries. What a sensation 
would it cause in Lothbury. What vehement laughter 
would it not excite among 

VOL. in. 20 



306 THE CONYALESCExMT. 

The daughters of Cheapside, and wives of Lombard Street ! 

I am sure that no town-bred or inland-born sub- 
jects can feel their true and natural nourishment at 
these sea-places. Nature, where she does not mean 
us for mariners and vagabonds, bids us stay at home. 
The salt foam seems to nourish a spleen. I am not 
half so good-natured as by the milder waters of my 
natural river. I would exchange these sea-gulls for 
swans, and scud a swallow forever about the banks of 
Thamesis. 



THE CONVALESCENT. 

A PRETTY severe fit of indisposition which, under the 
name of a nervous fever, has made a prisoner of me for 
some weeks past, and is but slowly leaving me, has 
reduced me to an incapacity of reflecting upon any 
topic foreign to itself. Expect no healthy conclusions 
from me this month, reader ; I can offer you only sick 
men's dreams. 

And truly the whole state of sickness is such ; for 
what else is it but a magnificent dream for a man to lie 
a-bed, and draw daylight curtains about him ; and, 
shutting out the sun, to induce a total oblivion of all 
the works which are going on under it ? To become 
insensible to all the operations of life, except the beat- 
ings of one feeble pulse ? 

If there be a regal solitude, it is a sick-bed. <, How 
the patient lords it there ; what caprices he acts with- 



THE CONVALESCENT. 307 

out control I liow kinglike he sways liis pillow — 
tumbling, and tossing, and shifting, and lowering, and 
thumping, and flatting, and moulding it, to the ever- 
varying requisitions of his throbbing temples. 

He changes sides oftener than a politician. Now he 
lies full length, then half length, obliquely, transversely, 
head and feet quite across the bed ; and none accuses 
him of tergiversation. Within the four curtains he is 
absolute. They are his Mare Clausum. 

How sickness enlarges the dimensions of a man's 
self to himself! he is his own exclusive object. Su- 
preme selfishness is inculcated upon him as his only 
duty. 'Tis the Two Tables of the Law to him. He 
has nothing to think of but how to get well. What 
passes out of doors, or within them, so he hear not the 
jarring of them, affects him not. 

A little while ago he was greatly concerned in the 
event of a lawsuit, which was to be the making or the 
marring of his dearest friend. He was to be seen 
trudging about upon this man's errand to fifty quarters 
of the town at once, jogging this witness, refreshing 
that solicitor. The cause was to come on yesterday. 
He is absolutely as indifferent to the decision, as if it 
were a question to be tried at Pekin. Peradventure 
from some whispering, going on about the house, not 
intended for his hearing, he picks up enough to make 
him understand, that things went cross-grained in the 
Court yesterday, and his friend is ruined. But the 
word " friend," and the word " ruin," disturb him no 
more than so much jargon. He is not to think of any- 
thing but how to get better. 

What a world of foreign cares are merged in that 
absorbing consideration ! 



308 THE CONVALESCENT, 

He has put on the strong armor of sickness, he is 
wrapped in the callous hide of suffering ; he keeps his 
sympathy, like some curious vintage, under trusty lock 
and key, for his own use only. 

He lies pitying himself, honing and moaning to him- 
self; he yearneth over himself; his bowels are even 
melted within him, to think what he suffers ; he is not 
ashamed to weep over himself. 

He is forever plotting how to do some good to 
himself; studying little stratagems and artificial alle- 
viations. 

He makes the most of himself ; dividing himself, by 
an allowable fiction, into as many distinct individuals, 
as he hath sore and sorrowing members. Sometimes 
he meditates — as of a thing apart from him — upon 
his poor aching head, and that dull pain which, dozing 
or waking, lay in it all the past night like a log, or 
palpable substance of pain, not to be removed without 
opening the very skull, as it seemed, to take it thence. 
Or he pities his long, clammy, attenuated fingers. He 
compassionates himself all over ; and his bed is a very 
discipline of humanity, and tender heart. 

He is his own sympathizer ; and instinctively feels 
that none can so well perform that office for him. He 
cares for few spectators to his tragedy. Only that 
punctual face of the old nurse pleases him, that an- 
nounces iis broths and his cordials. He likes it because 
it iS; so unmoved, and because he can pour forth his 
feverish ejaculations before it as unreservedly as to his 
bedpost. «- 

To the world's business he is dead. He understands 
not what the callings and occupations of mortals are ; 
only he has a glimmering conceit of some such thing, 



THE CONVALESCENT. 309 

when the doctor makes his daily call ; and even in the 
lines on that busy face he reads no multiplicity of pa- 
tients, but solely conceives of himself as the sick man. 
To what other uneasy couch the good man is hasten- 
ing, when he slips out of his chamber, folding up his 
thin douceur so carefully, for fear of rustling — is no 
speculation which he can at present entertain. He 
thinks only of the regular return of the same phenom- 
enon at the same hour to-morrow. 

Household rumors touch him not. Some faint 
murmur, indicative of life going on within the house, 
soothes him, while he knows not distinctly what it is. 
He is not to know anything, not to think of anything. 
Servants gliding up or down the distant staircase, 
treading as upon velvet, gently keep his ear awake, 
so lono; as he troubles not himself further than with 
some feeble guess at their errands. Exacter knowledge 
would be a burden to him ; he can just endure the 
pressure of conjecture. He opens his eye faintly at 
the dull stroke of the muffled knocker, and closes it 
again without asking " Who was it ? " He is flattered 
by a general notion that inquiries are making after 
him, but he cares not to know the name of the in- 
quirer. In the general stillness, and awful hush of the 
house, he lies in state, and feels his sovereignty. 

To be sick is to enjoy monarchial prerogatives. Com- 
pare the silent tread, and quiet ministry, almost by the 
eye only, with which he is served — with the care- 
less demeanor, the unceremonious goings in and out 
(slapping of doors, or leaving them open) of the very 
same attendants, when he is getting a little better — 
and you will confess, that from the bed of sickness 
(throne let me rather call it) to the elbowchair of 



310 THE CONVALESCENT. 

convalescence, is a fall from dignity, amounting to a 
deposition. 

How convalescence shrinks a man back to his pris- 
tine stature ! where is now the space, which he occu- 
pied so lately, in his own, in the family's eye ? 

The scene of his regalities, his sick-room, which was 
his presence chamber, where he lay and acted his des- 
potic fancies — how is it reduced to a common bed- 
room ! The trimness of the very bed has something 
petty and unmeaning about it. It is made every day. 
How unlike to that wavy, many-furrowed, oceanic 
surface, which it presented so short a time since, when 
to make it was a service not to be thought of at oftener 
than three or four day revolutions, when the patient 
was with pain and grief to be lifted for a little while 
out of it, to submit to the encroachments of unwelcome 
neatness, and decencies which his shaken frame depre- 
cated ; then to be lifted into it again, for another three 
or four days' respite, to flounder it out of shape again, 
while every fresh farrow was an historical record of 
some shifting posture, some uneasy turning, some seek- 
ing for a little ease ; and the shrunken skin scarce told 
a truer story than the crumpled coverlid. 

Hushed are those mysterious sighs — those groans 
— so much more awful, while we knew not from what 
caverns of vast hidden suffering they proceeded. The 
Lernean pangs are quenched. The riddle of sickness 
is solved ; and Philoctetes is become an ordinary per- 
sonage. 

Perhaps some relic of the sick man's dream of great- 
ness survives in the still lingering visitations of the 
medical attendant. But how is he, too, changed with 
everything else ! Can this be he — this man of news 



THE CONVALESCENT. 311 

> — of chat — of anecdote — of everything but physic, — 
can this be he, who so lately came between the patient 
and his cruel enemy, as on some solemn embassy from 
'Nature, erecting herself into a high mediating party ? — 
Pshaw ! 'tis some old woman. 

Farewell with him all that made sickness pompous 
— the spell that hushed the household — the desert- 
like stillness, felt throughout its inmost chambers — 
the mute attendance — the inquiry by looks — the still 
softer delicacies of self-attention — the sole and single 
eye of distemper alonely fixed upon itself — world- 
thoughts excluded — the man a world unto himself — 
his own theatre, — 

What a speck is he dwindled into ! 

In this flat swamp of convalescence, left by the ebb 
of sickness, yet far enough fr^om the terra firma of 
established health, your note, dear Editor, reached 
me, requesting — an article. In Articulo Mortis, 
thought I ; but it is something hard, — and the quibble, 
wretched as it was, relieved me. The summons, un- 
seasonable as it appeared, seemed to link me on again 
to the petty businesses of life, which I had lost sight 
of; a gentle call to activity, however trivial ; a whole- 
some weaning from that preposterous dream of self- 
absorption — the puflpy state of sickness — in which I 
confess to have lain so long, insensible to the maga- 
zines and monarchies, of the world alike ; to its laws, 
and to its literature. The hypochondriac flatus is sub- 
siding; the acres, which in imagination I had spread 
over — for the sick man swells in the sole contempla- 
tion of his single sufferings, till he becomes a Tityus to 
himself — are wasting to a span ; and for the giant of 



312 SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 

self-importance, which I was so lately, you have me 
once again in my natural pretensions — the lean and 
meagre figure of your insignificant Essayist. 



SANITY OF TEUE GENIUS. 

So far from the position holding true, that great wit 
(or genius, in our modern way of speaking) has a ne- 
cessary alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the 
contrary, will ever be found to be the sanest writers. 
It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a mad Shak- 
speare. The greatness of wit, by which the poetic 
talent is here chiefly to be understood, manifests itself 
in the admirable balance of all the faculties. Madness 
is the disproportionate straining or excess of any one of 
them. "So strong a wit," says Cowley, speaking of a 
poetical friend, 

" did Nature to him frame, 

As all things but his judgment overcame; 

His judgment like the heavenly moon did show, 

Tempering that mighty sea below." 

The ground of the mistake is, that men, finding in 
the raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exalta- 
tion, to which they have no parallel in their own ex- 
perience, besides the spurious resemblance of it in 
dreams and fevers, impute a state of dreaminess and 
fever to the poet. But the true poet dreams being 
awake. He is not possessed by his subject, but has 
dominion over it. In the groves of Eden he walks 



SANITY OF TKUE GENIUS. 313 

familiar as in his native paths. He ascends the empy- 
rean heaven, and is not intoxicated. He treads the 
burning marl without dismay ; he wings his flight with- 
out self-loss through realms of chaos " and old night." 
Or if, abandoning himself to that severer chaos of a 
"human mind untuned," he is content awhile to be 
mad with Lear, or to hate mankind (a sort of madness) 
with Timon ; neither is that madness, nor this misan- 
thropy, so unchecked, but that — never letting the 
reins of reason wholly go, while most he seems to do 
so — he has his better genius still whispering at his 
ear, with the good servant Kent suggesting saner coun- 
sels, or with the honest steward Flavins recommending 
kindher resolutions. Where he seems most to recede 
from humanity, he will be found the truest to it. From 
beyond the scope of Nature, if he summon possible 
existences, he subjugates them to the law of her con- 
sistency. He is beautifully loyal to that sovereign 
directress, even when he appears most to betray and 
desert her. His ideal tribes submit to policy ; his very 
monsters are tamed to his hand, even as that wild sea- 
brood, shepherded by Proteus. He tames, and he 
clothes them with attributes of flesh and blood, till they 
wonder at themselves, like Indian Islanders forced to 
submit to European vesture. Caliban, the Witches, 
are as true to the laws of their own nature (ours with 
a difi'erence) as Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Here- 
in the great and the little wits are differenced; that 
if the latter wander ever so little from nature or ac- 
tual existence, they lose themselves, and their readers. 
Their phantoms are lawless ; their visions nightmares. 
They do not create, which implies shaping and consist- 
ency. Their imaginations are not active, — for to be 



314 SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 

active is to call something into act and form, — but pas- 
sive, as men in sick dreams. For the supernatural, or 
something superadded to what we know of nature, 
they give you the plainly non-natural. And if this 
were all, and that these mental hallucinations were dis- 
coverable only in the treatment of subjects out of 
nature, or transcending it, the judgment might with 
some plea be pardoned if it ran riot, and a little wan- 
tonized ; but even in the describing of real and every- 
day life, that which is before their eyes, one of these 
lesser wits shall more deviate from nature, — show more 
of that inconsequence, which has a natural alliance 
with frenzy, — than a great genius in his "maddest fits," 
as Withers somewhere calls them. We appeal to any 
one that is acquainted with the common run of Lane's 
novels, — as they existed some twenty or thirty years 
back, — those scanty intellectual viands of the whole fe- 
male reading public, till a happier genius arose, and ex- 
pelled forever the innutritions phantoms, — whether he 
has not found his brain more '' betossed," his memory 
more puzzled, his sense of when and where more con- 
founded, among the improbable events, the incoherent 
incidents, the inconsistent characters, or no characters, 
of some third-rate love-intrigue, — where the persons 
shall be a Lord Glendamour and a Miss Rivers, and the 
scene only alternate between Bath and Bond Street, — 
a more bewildering dreaminess induced upon him, than 
he has felt wandering over all the fairy grounds of 
Spenser. In the productions we refer to, nothing but 
names and places is familiar ; the persons are neither of 
this world nor of any other conceivable one ; an end- 
less string of activities without purpose, of purposes 
destitute of motive : — we meet phantoms in our known 



SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS. 315 

walks ; fantasques only christened. In the poet we 
have names which announce fiction ; and we have ab- 
solutely no place at all, for the things and persons of 
the Fairy Queen prate not of their " whereabout." 
But in their inner nature, and the law of their speech 
and actions, we are at home and upon acquainted 
ground. The one turns life into a dream ; the other 
to the wildest dreams gives the sobrieties of every-day 
occurrences. By what subtle art of tracing the mental 
processes it is efPected, we are not philosophers enough 
to explain ; but in that wonderful episode of the cave of 
Mammon, in which the Money God appears first in the 
lowest form of a miser, is then a worker of metals, and 
becomes the god of all the treasures of the world ; and 
has a daughter, Ambition, before whom all the world 
kneels for favors, — with the Hesperian fruit, the waters 
of Tantalus, with Pilate washing his hands vainly, but 
not impertinently, in the same stream, — that we should 
be at one moment in the cave of an old hoarder of 
treasures, at the next at the forge of the Cyclops, in a 
palace and yet in hell, all at once, with the shifting 
mutations of the most rambling dream, and our judg- 
ment yet all the time awake, and neither able nor will- 
ing to detect the fallacy, — is a proof of that hidden 
sanity which still guides the poet in the wildest seem- 
ing-aberrations. 

It is not enough to say that the whole episode is a 
copy of the mind's conceptions in sleep ; it is, in some 
sort, — but what a copy ! Let the most romantic of us, 
that has been entertained all night with the spectacle 
of some wild and magnificent vision, recombine it in 
the morning, and try it by his waking judgment. 
That which appeared so shifting, and yet so coherent, 



316 CAPTAIN JACKSON. 

while that faculty was passive, when it comes under 
cool examination shall appear so reasonless and so 
unlinked, that we are ashamed to have been so de- 
luded ; and to have taken, though but in sleep, a 
monster for a god. But the transitions in this episode 
are every whit as violent as in the most extravagant 
dream, and yet the waking judgment ratifies them. 



CAPTAIN JACKSON. 

Among the deaths in our obituary for this month, I 
observe with concern " At his cottage on the Bath 
road. Captain Jackson." The name and attribution 
are common enough ; but a feeling like reproach per- 
suades me, that this could have been no other in fact 
than my dear old friend, who some five-and-twenty 
years ago rented a tenement, which he was pleased to 
dignify with the appellation here used, about a mile 
from Westbourn Green. Alack, how good men, and 
the good turns they do us, slide out of memory, and are 
recalled but by the surprise of some such sad memento 
as that which now lies before us ! 

He whom I mean was a retired half-pay officer, with 
a wife and two grown-up daughters, whom he main- 
tained with the port and notions of gentlewomen upon 
that slender professional allowance. Comely girls they 
were too. 

And was I in danger of forgetting this man ? — his 
cheerful suppers — the noble tone of hospitality, when 



CAPTAIN JACKSON. 817 

first you set your foot in the cottage^ — ■ the anxious 
ministerings about you, where little or nothing (God 
knows) was to be ministered. Althea's horn in a poor 
platter, — the power of self-enchantment, by which, in 
his magnificent wishes to entertain you, he multiplied 
his means to bounties. 

You saw with your bodily eyes indeed what seemed 
a bare scrag — cold savings from the foregone meal — 
remnant hardly sufficient to send a mendicant from the 
door contented. But in the copious will — the revel- 
ling imagination of your host — the " mind, the mind. 
Master Shallow," whole beeves were spread before you 

— hecatombs — no end appeared to the profiision. 

It was the widow's cruse — the loaves and fishes ; 
carving could not lessen, nor helping diminish it — the 
stamina were left — the elemental bone still flourished, 
divested of its accidents. 

" Let us live while we can," methinks I hear the 
open-handed creature exclaim ; " while we have, let us 
not want," " here is plenty left; " " want for nothing," 

— with many more such hospitable sayings, the spurs 
of appetite, and old concomitants of smoking boards, 
and feast-oppressed chargers. Then sliding a slender 
ratio of Single Gloucester upon his wife's plate, or the 
daughters', he would convey the remanent rind into 
his own, with a merry quirk of " the nearer the bone," 
&c., and declaring that he universally preferred the 
outside. For we had our table distinctions, you are to 
know, and some of us in a manner sat above the salt. 
None but his guest or guests dreamed of tasting flesh 
luxuries at night, the fragments were vere hospitihus 
9acra. But of one thing or another there was always 
enough, and leavings ; only he would sometimes finish 



318 CAPTAIN JACKSON. 

the remainder crust, to show that he wished no sav- 
ings. 

Wine we had none ; nor, except on very rare oc- 
casions, spirits ; but the sensation of wine was there. 
Some thin kind of ale I remember, — " British bev- 
erage," he would say ! " Push about, my boys ; " 
" Drink to your sweethearts, girls." At every meagre 
draught a toast must ensue, or a song. All the forms 
of good liquor were there, with none of the effects 
wanting. Shut your eyes, and you would swear a 
capacious bowl of punch was foaming in the centre, 
with beams of generous Port or Madeira radiating to 
it from each of the table-corners. You got flustered, 
without knowing whence ; tipsy upon words ; and 
reeled under the potency of his unperforming Baccha- 
nalian encouragments. 

We had our songs, — " Why, Soldiers, why," — and 
the " British Grenadiers," — in which last we were all 
obliged to bear chorus. Both the daughters sang. 
Their proficiency was a nightly theme, — the masters he 
had given them, — the " no-expense " which he spared 
to accomplish them in a science " so necessary to 
young women." But then — they could not sing 
" without the instrument." 

Sacred, and, by me, never-to-be-violated, secrets of 
Poverty ! Should I disclose your honest aims at 
grandeur, your makeshift eflForts of magnificence? 
Sleep, sleep, with all thy broken keys, if one of the 
bunch be extant ; thrummed by a thousand ancestral 
thumbs ; dear, cracked spinnet of dearer Louisa ! 
Without mention of mine, be dumb, thou thin ac- 
companier of her thinner warble ! A veil be spread 
over the dear delighted face of the well-deluded father, 



CAPTAIN JACKSON. 319 

who now, haply listening to cherubic notes, scarce feels 
sincerer pleasure than when she awakened thy time- 
shaken chords responsive to the twitterings of that 
slender image of a voice. 

We were not without our literary talk either. It 
did not extend far, but as far as it went, it was good. 
It was bottomed well ; had good grounds to go upon. 
In the cottage was a room, which tradition authenti- 
cated to have been the same in which Glover, in his 
occasional retirements, had penned the greater part of 
his Leonidas. This circumstance was nightly quoted, 
though none of the present inmates, that I could dis- 
cover, appeared ever to have met with the poem in 
question. But that was no matter. Glover had 
written there, and the anecdote was pressed into the 
account of the family importance. It diffused a learned 
air through the apartment, the little side casement of 
which, (the poet's study window,) opening upon a 
superb view as far as the pretty spire of Harrow, over 
domains and patrimonial acres, not a rood nor square 
yard whereof our host could call his own, yet gave oc- 
casion to an immoderate expansion of — vanity shall I 
call it ? — in his bosom, as he showed them in a glow- 
ing ^summer evening. It was all his, he took it all in, 
and communicated rich portions of it to his guests. It 
was a part of his largess, his hospitality ; it was going 
over his grounds ; he was lord for the time of showing 
them, and you the implicit lookers-up to his magnifi- 
cence. 

He was a juggler, who threw mists before your 
eyes — you had no time to detect his fallacies. He 
would say, " Hand me the silver sugar tongs ; " and 
before you could discover it was a single spoon, and 



320 CAPTAIN JACKSON. 

thsit plated, he would disturb and captivate your imagi- 
nation by a misnomer of " the urn " for a tea-kettle ; 
or by calling a homely bench a sofa. Rich men direct 
you to their furniture, poor ones divert you from it ; he 
neither did one nor the other, but by simply assuming 
that everything was handsome about him, you were 
positively at a demur what you did, or did not see, at 
the cottage. With nothing to live on, he seemed to live 
on everything. He had a stock of wealth in his mind; 
not that which is properly termed Content, for in truth 
he was not to be contained at all, but overflowed all 
bounds by the force of a magnificent self-delusion. 

Enthusiasm is catching ; and even his wife, a sober 
native of North Britain, who generally saw things more 
as they were, was not proof against the continual col- 
lision of his credulity. Her daughters were rational 
and discreet young women ; in the main, perhaps, not 
insensible to their true circumstances. I have seen 
them assume a thoughtful air at times. But such was 
the preponderating opulence of his fancy, that I am 
persuaded, not for any half hour together did they ever 
look their own prospects fairly in the face. There was 
no resisting the vortex of his temperament. His riotous 
imagination conjured up handsome settlements before 
their eyes, which kept them up in the eye of the world 
too, and seem at last to have realized themselves ; for 
they both have mamed since, 1 am told, more than 
respectably. 

It is long since, and my memory waxes dim on some 
subjects, or I should wish, to convey some notion of the 
manner in which the pleasant creature described the 
circumstances of his own wedding-day. I faintly re- 
member something of a chaise-and-four, in which he 



CAPTAIN JACKSON. 321 

made his entry into Glasgow on that morning to fetch 
the bride home, or carry her thither, I forget which. 
It so completely made out the stanza of the old 
ballad — 

»When we came down through Glasgow town, 

We were a comely sight to see ; 
My love was clad in black velvet, 

And I myself in cramasie. 

I suppose it was the only occasion upon which his 
own actual splendor at all corresponded with the 
world's notions on that subject. In homely cart, 
or travelling caravan, by whatever humble vehicle 
they chanced to be transported in less prosperous 
days, the ride through Glasgow came back upon his 
fancy, not as a humiliating contrast, but as a fair 
occasion for reverting to that one day's state. It 
seemed an " equipage etern " from which no power 
of fate or fortune, once mounted, had power there- 
after to dislodge him. 

There is some merit in putting a handsome face 
upon indigent circumstances. To bully and swagger 
away the sense of them before strangers, may not be 
always discommendable. Tibbs, and Bobadil, even 
when detected, have more of our admiration than 
contempt. But for a man to put the cheat upon 
himself; to play the Bobadil at home ; and, steeped 
in poverty up to the lips, to fancy himself all the 
while chin-deep in riches, is a strain of constitutional 
philosophy, and a mastery over fortune, which was 
reserved for my old friend Captain Jackson, 

VOL. III. 21 



322 THE SUPEKANNUATED MAN. 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 

Sera tamea respexit 
Libertas. Virgil. 

A Clerk I was in London gay. 

O'Keefe. 

If peradventure, Reader, it has been tliy lot to waste 
the golden years of thy life — thy shining youth — in 
the irksome confinement of an office ; to have thy 
prison-days prolonged through middle age down to 
decrepitude and silver hairs, without hope of release or 
respite ; to have lived to forget that there are such 
things as holidays, or to remember them but as the 
prerogatives of childhood ; then, and then only, will 
you be able to appreciate my deliverance. 

It is now six-and- thirty years since I took my seat at 
the desk in Mincing Lane. Melancholy was the transi- 
tion at fourteen from the abundant playtime, and the 
frequently intervening vacations of school days, to the 
eight, nine, and sometimes ten hours' a-day attendance 
at the counting-house. But time partially reconciles us 
to anything. I gradually became content — doggedly 
contented, as wild animals in cages. 

It is true I had my Sundays to myself; but Sun- 
days, admirable as the institution of them is for pur- 
poses of worship, are for that very reason the very 
worst adapted for days of unbending and recreation. 
In particular, there is a gloom for me attendant upon 
a city Sunday, a weight in the air. I miss the cheer- 
ful cries of London, the music, and the ballad-singers, 
— the buzz and stirring murmur of the streets. Those 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 323 

eternal bells depress me. The closed shops repel me. 
Prints, pictures, all the glittering and endless succession 
of knacks and gewgaws, and ostentatiously displayed 
wares of tradesmen, which make a weekday saunter 
through the less busy parts of the metropolis so delight- 
ful — are shut out. No book-stalls deliciously to idle 
over — No busy faces to recreate the idle man who 
contemplates them ever parsing by — the very face of 
business a charm by contrast to his temporary relaxa- 
tion from it. Nothing to be seen but unhappy coun- 
tenances — or half-happy at best — of emancipated 
'prentices and little tradesfolks, with here and there a 
servant-maid that has got leave to go out, who, slaving 
all the week, with the habit has lost almost the capacity 
of enjoying a free hour ; and livelily expressing the 
hollowness of a day's pleasuring. The very strollers in 
the fields on that day look anything but comfortable. 

But besides Sundays I had a day at Easter, and a 
day at Christmas, with a full week in the summer to go 
and air myself in my native fields of Hertfordshire. 
This last was a great indulgence ; and the prospect of 
its recurrence, I believe, alone kept me up through the 
year, and made my durance tolerable. But when the 
week came round, did the glittering phantom of the 
distance keep touch with me ? or rather was it not a 
series of seven uneasy days, spent in restless pursuit 
o£ pleasure, and a wearisome anxiety to find out how 
to make the most of them ? Where was the quiet, 
where the promised rest ? Before I had a taste of it, 
it was vanished. I was at the desk again, counting 
upon the fifty-one tedious weeks that must intervene 
before such another snatch would come. Still the 
prospect of its coming threw something of an illumi- 



324 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 

nation upon the darker side of mj captivity. Without 
it, as I have said, I could scarcely have sustained my 
thraldom. 

Independently of the rigors of attendance, I have 
ever been haunted with a sense (perhaps a mere ca- 
price) of incapacity for business. This, during my 
latter years, had increased to such a degree, that it was 
visible in all the lines of my countenance. My health 
and my good spirits flagged. I had perpetually a 
dread of some crisis, to which I should be found un- 
equal. Besides my daylight servitude, I served over 
again all night in my sleep, and Avould awake with 
tcM'ors of imaginary false entries, errors in my ac- 
counts, and the like. I was fifty years of age, and 
no prospect of emancipation presented itself. I had 
grown to my desk, as it were ; and the wood had en- 
tered into my soul. 

My fellows in the office would sometimes rally me 
upon the trouble legible in my countenance ; but I 
did not know that it had raised the suspicions of any 
of my employers, when, on the fifth of last month, a 

day ever to be remembered by me, L , the junior 

partner in the firm, calling me on one side, directly 
taxed me with my bad looks, and frankly inquired the 
cause of them. So taxed, I honestly made confession 
of my infirmity, and added that I was afraid I should 
eventually be obliged to resign his service. He spoke 
some words of course to hearten me, and there the 
matter rested. A whole week I remained laboring 
under the impression that I had acted imprudently in 
my disclosure ; that I had foolishly given a handle 
against myself, and had been anticipating my own 
dismissal. A week passed in this manner, the most 



THE SUPEKANNUATED MAN. 325 

anxious one, I verily believe, in my whole life, when, 
on the evening of the 12th of April, just as I was 
about quitting my desk to go home, (it might be about 
eight o'clock,) I received an awful summons to attend 
the presence of the whole assembled firm in the formi- 
dable back parlor. I thought now my time is surely 
come, I have done for myself, I am going to be told 

that they have no longer occasion for me. L , I 

could see, smiled at the terror I was in, which was a 
little relief to me, — when to my utter astonishment 

B , the eldest partner, began a formal harangue to 

me on the length of my services, my very meritorious 
conduct during the whole of the time, (the dense, 
thought I, how did he find out that ? I protest I never 
had the confidence to think as much). He went on to 
descant on the expediency of retiring at a certain time 
of life, (how my heart panted !) and asking me a few 
questions as to the amount of my own property, of 
which I have a little, ended with a proposal, to which 
his three partners nodded a grave assent, that I should 
accept from the house, which I had served so well, a 
pension for life to the amount of two thirds of my 
accustomed salary — a magnificent offer ! I do not 
know what I answered between surprise and gratitude, 
but it was understood that I accepted their proposal, 
and I was told that I was free from that hour to leave 
their service. I stammered out a bow, and at just ten 
minutes after eight I went home — forever. This 
noble benefit — gratitude forbids me to conceal their 
names — I owe to the kindness of the most munificent 
firm in the world — the house of Boldero, Merry- 
weather, Bosanquet, and Lacy. 

Esto perpetua ! 



326 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 

For the first day or two I felt stunned, overwlielmed. 
I could only apprehend my felicity ; I was too con- 
fused to taste it sincerely. I wandered about, thinking 
I was happy, and knowing that I was not. I was 
in the condition of a prisoner in the old Bastile, sud- 
denly let loose after a forty years' confinement. I 
could scarce trust myself with myself. It was like 
passing out of Time into Eternity, — for it is a sort of 
Eternity for a man to have his Time all to himself. It 
seemed to me that I had more time on my hands than 
I could ever manage. From a poor man, poor in 
Time, I was suddenly lifted up into a vast revenue ; I 
CQuld see no end of my possessions ; I wanted some 
steward, or judicious bailiff, to manage my estates in 
Time for me. And here let me caution persons grown 
old in active business, not lightly, nor without weigh- 
ing their own resources, to forego their customay em- 
ployment all at once, for there may be danger in it. I 
feel it by myself, but I know that my resources are suf- 
ficient ; and now that those first giddy raptures have 
subsided, I have a quiet home-feeling of the blessedness 
of my condition. I am in no hurry. Having all holi- 
days, I am as though I had none. If Time hung 
heavy upon me, I could walk it away ; but I do not 
walk all day long, as I used to do in those old transient 
holidays, thirty miles a day, to make the most of them. 
If Time were troublesome, I could read it away ; but I 
do not read in that violent measure, with which, having 
no Time my own but candlelight Time, I used to 
weary out my head and eyesight in bygone winters. 
I walk, read, or scribble (as now) just when the fit 
seizes me. I no longer hunt after pleasure; I let it 
come to me. I am like the man 



THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 327 

that's born, and has his years come to him, 
In some green desert. 

" Years ! " you will say ; " what is this superannu- 
ated simpleton calculating upon ? He lias already told 
us he is past fifty." 

I have indeed lived nominally fifty years, but deduct 
out of them the hours which I have lived to other peo- 
ple, and not to myself, and you will find me still a 
young fellow. For that is the only true Time which 
a man can properly call his own, that which he has all 
to himself; the rest, though in some sense he may be 
said to live it, is other people's Time, not his. The 
remnant of my poor days, long or short, is at least 
multiplied for me threefold. My ten next years, if I 
stretch so far, will be as long as any preceding thirty. 
'Tis a fair rule-of-three sum. 

Among the strange fantasies which beset me at the 
commencement of my freedom, and of which all traces 
are not yet gone, one Avas, that a vast tract of time had 
intervened since I quitted the Counting-House. I 
could not conceive of it as an afikir of yesterday. The 
partners, and the clerks with whom I had for so many 
years, and for so many hours in each day of the year, 
been closely associated, — being suddenly removed from 
them, — they seemed as dead to me. There is a fine 
passage, which may serve to illustrate this fancy, in a 
Tragedy by Sir Robert Howard, speaking of a friend's 
death. 

'Twas but just now he went away; 
I have not since had time to shed a tear; 
And yet the distance does the same appear 
As if he had been a thousand years from me. 
Time takes no measure in Eternity. 

To dissipate this awkward feeling, I have been fain 



328 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 

to go among tliem once or twice since ; to ^^isit my old 
desk-fellows, — my co-brethren of the quill, — that I 
had left below in the state militant. Not all the kind- 
ness with which they received me could quite restore 
to me that pleasant familiarity, which I had heretofore 
enjoyed among them. We cracked some of our old 
jokes, but methought they went off but faintly. ]My 
old desk ; the peg where I hung my hat were appro- 
priated to another. I knew it must be, but I could 

not take it kindly. D 1 take me, if I did not feel 

some remorse — beast, if I had not — at quitting my 
old compeers, the faithful partners of my toils for six- 
and-thirty years, that smoothed for me with their jokes 
and conundrums the ruggedness of my professional 
road. Had it been so rugged then, after all ? or was I 
a coward simply ? Well, it is too late to repent ; and 
I also know that these suggestions are a common fal- 
lacy of the mind on such occasions. But my heart 
smote me. I had violently broken the bands betwixt 
us. It was at least not courteous. I shall be some 
time before I get quite reconciled to the separation. 
Farewell, old cronies, yet not for long, for again and 
again I will come among ye, if I shall have your 

leave. Farewell, Ch , dry, sarcastic, and friendly ! 

Do , mild, slow to move, and gentlemanly ! PI , 

officious to do, and to volunteer, good services ! — and 
thou, thou dreary pile, fit mansion for a Gresham or a 
Whittington of old, stately house of Merchants ; with 
thy labyrinthine passages, and light-excluding, pent-up 
offices, where candles for one half the year supplied the 
place of the sun's light ; iinhealtliy contributor to my 
weal, stern fosterer of my living, farewell ! In thee 
remain, and not in the obscure collection of some 



THE SUPEEANNUATED MAN. 329 

wandering bookseller, my " works ! " There let \tiem. 
rest, as I do from my labors, piled on thy massy 
shelves, more MSS. in folio than ever Aquinas left, 
and full as useful ! My mantle I bequeathe among 

ye. ^ 

A fortnight has passed since the date of my first 
communication. At that period I was approaching to 
tranquillity, but had not reached it. I boasted of a 
calm indeed, but it was comparative only. Something 
of the first flutter was left ; an unsettling sense of 
novelty ; the dazzle to weak eyes of unaccustomed 
light. I missed my old chams, forsooth, as if they 
had been some necessary part of my apparel. I was 
a poor Carthusian, from strict cellular discipline sud- 
denly by some revolution returned upon the world. 
I am now as if I had never been other than my own 
master. It is natural to me to go where I please, to 
do what I please. I find myself at eleven o'clock in 
the day in Bond Street, and it seems to me that I have 
been sauntering there at that very hour for years past. 
I digress into Soho, to explore a bookstall. Methinks 
I have been thirty years a collector. There is nothing 
strange nor new in it. I find myself before a fine pic- 
ture in the morning. Was it ever otherwise ? What 
is become of Fish Street Hill ? Where is Fenchurch 
Street? Stones of old Mincing Lane, which I have 
worn with my daily pilgrimage for six-and-thirty 
years, to the footsteps of what toil-worn clerk are 
your everlasting flints now vocal ? I indent the gayer 
flags of Pall Mall. It is 'Change time, and I am 
strangely among the Elgin marbles. It was no hy- 
perbole when I ventured to compare the change in 
my condition to a passing into another world. Time 



330 THE SUPERANNUATED MAN. 

stands still in a manner to me. I have lost all dis- 
tinction of season. I do not know the day of the week 
or of the month. Each day used to be individually felt 
by me in its reference to the foreign postdays ; in its 
distance from, or propinquity to, the next Sunday. I 
had my Wednesday feelings, my Saturday nights' 
sensations. The genius of each day was upon me dis- 
tinctly during the whole of it, affecting my appetite, 
spirits, &c. The phantom of the next day, with the 
dreary five to follow, sat as a load upon my poor Sab- 
bath recreations. What charm has washed that Ethiop 
white ? What is gone of Black Monday ? All days 
are the same. Sunday itself, — that unfortunate failure 
of a holiday, as it too often proved, what with my sense 
of its fugitiveness, and overcare to get the greatest 
quantity of pleasure out of it, — is melted down into 
a weekday. I can spare to go to church now, without 
grudging the huge cantle which it used to seem to cut 
out of the holiday. I have Time for everything. I 
can visit a sick friend. I can interrupt the man of 
much occupation when he is busiest. I can insult over 
him with an invitation to take a day's pleasure with me 
to Windsor this fine May morning. It is Lucretian 
pleasure to behold the poor drudges, whom I have left 
behind in the world, carking and caring ; like horses in 
a mill, drudo-ino; on in the same eternal round — and 
what is it all for ? A man can never have too much 
Time to himself, nor too little to do. Had I a little 
son, I would christen him Nothing-to-do ; he should 
do nothing. Man, I verily believe, is out of his ele- 
ment as long as he is operative. I am altogether for 
the life contemplative. Will no kindly earthquake 
come and swallow up those accursed cotton mills ? 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 331 

Take me that lumber of a desk there, and bowl it 
down 

As low as to the fiends. 

I am no longer , clerk to the Firm of, &c. 

I am Retired Leisure. I am to be met with in trim 
gardens. I am already come to be known by my 
vacant face and careless gesture, perambulating at no 
fixed pace, nor with any settled purpose. I walk 
about ; not to and from. They tell me, a certain cum 
dignitate air, that has been buried so long with my 
other good parts, has begun to shoot forth in my per- 
son. I grow into gentility perceptibly. When I take 
up a newspaper, it is to read the state of the opera. 
Opus operatum est. I have done all that I came into 
this world to do. I have worked taskwork, and have 
the rest of the day to myself. 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 

It is an ordinary criticism, that my Lord Shaftes- 
bury, and Sir William Temple, are models of the 
genteel style in writing. We should prefer saying — 
of the lordly, and the gentlemanly. Nothing can be 
more unlike, than the inflated finical rhapsodies of 
Shaftesbury and the plain natural chitchat of Temple. 
The man of rank is discernible in both writers ; but in 
the one it is only insinuated gracefully, in the other it 
stands out offensively. The peer seems to have written 
with his coronet on, and his Earl's mantle before him ; 
the commoner in his elbow chair and undress. What 



832 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WEITING. 

can be more pleasant than the way in which the retired 
statesman peeps out in his essays, penned by the latter 
in his delightful retreat at Shene ? They scent of 
Nimeguen, and the Hague. Scarce an authority is 
quoted under an ambassador. Don Francisco de Melo, 
a " Portugal Envoy in England," tells him it was fre- 
quent in his country for men, spent with age and other 
decays, so as they could not hope for above a year or 
two of life, to ship themselves away in a Brazil fleet, 
and after their arrival there to go on a great length, 
sometimes of twenty or thirty years, or more, by the 
force of that vigor they recovered with that remove. 
" Whether such an effect (Temple beautifully adds) 
might grow from the air, or the fruits of that climate, or 
by approaching nearer the sun, which is the fountain of 
light and heat, when their natural heat was so far de- 
cayed ; or whether the piecing out of an old man's life 
were worth the pains ; I cannot tell : perhaps the 
play is not worth the candle." Monsieur Pompone, 
" French Ambassador in his (Sir William's) time at 
the Hague," certifies him, that in his life he had never 
heard of any man in France that arrived at a hundred 
years of age ; a limitation of life which the old gentle- 
man imputes to the excellence of their climate, giving 
them such a liveliness of temper and humor, as disposes 
them to more pleasures of all kinds than in other coun- 
tries ; and moralizes upon the matter very sensibly. 
The " late Robert, Earl of Leicester," furnishes him 
with a story of a Countess of Desmond, married out of 
England in Edward the Fourth's time, and who lived 
far in King James's reign. The " same noble person " 
gives him an account, how such a year, in the same 
reign, there went about the country a set of morris- 
dancers, composed of ten men who danced, a Maid- 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 333 

marian, and a tabor and pipe ; and how these twelve, 
one with another, made up twelve hundred years. " It 
was not so much (says Temple) that so many in one 
small county (Hertfordshire) should live to that age, as 
that they should be in vigor and in humor to travel 
and to dance." Monsieur Zulichem, one of his " col- 
leagues at the Hague," informs him of a cure for the 
gout ; which is confirmed by another " Envoy," Mon- 
sieur Serinchamps, in that town, who had tried it. 
Old Prince Maurice of Nassau recommends to him the 
use of hammocks in that complaint; having been al- 
lured to sleep, while suflPering under it himself, by the 
" constant motion or swinging of those airy beds." 
Count Egmont, and the Rhinegrave who " was killed 
last summer before Maestricht," impart to him their 
experiences. 

But the rank of the writer is never more innocently 
disclosed, than where he takes for granted the com- 
pliments paid by foreigners to his fruit-trees. For the 
taste and perfection of what we esteem the best, he 
can truly say, that the French, who have eaten his 
peaches and grapes at Shene in no very ill year, have 
generally concluded that the last are as good as any 
they have eaten in France on this side Fontainebleau ; 
and the first as good as any they have eat in Gascony. 
Italians have agreed his white figs to be as good as any 
of that sort in Italy, which is the earlier kind of white 
fig there ; for in the later kind and the blue, we cannot 
come near the warm climates, no more than in the 
Frontignac or Muscat grape. His orange-trees, too, 
are as large as any he saw when he was young in 
France, except those of Fontainebleau ; or what he has 
seen since in the Low Countries, except some very old 



334 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 

ones of the Prince of Orange's. Of grapes he had the 
honor of bringing over four sorts into England, which 
he enumerates, and supposes that they are all by this 
time pretty common among some gardeners in his 
neighborhood, as well as several persons of quality ; for 
he ever thought all things of this kind " the commoner 
they are made the better." The garden pedantry with 
which he asserts that 'tis to little purpose to plant any 
of the best fruits, as peaches or grapes, hardly, he 
doubts, beyond Northamptonshire at the farthest north- 
wards ; and praises the " Bishop of Munster at Cose- 
velt," for attempting nothing beyond cherries in that 
cold climate ; is equally pleasant and in character. " I 
may perhaps " (he thus ends his sweet Garden Essay 
with a passage worthy of Cowley) " be allowed to 
know something of this trade, since I have so long 
allowed myself to be good for nothing else, which few 
men will do, or enjoy their gardens, without often look- 
ing abroad to see how other matters play, what motions 
in the state, and what invitations they may hope for 
into other scenes. For my own part, as the country 
life, and this part of it more particularly, were the in- 
clination of my youth itself, so they are the pleasure of 
my age ; and I can truly say that, among many great 
employments that have fallen to my share, I have 
never asked or sought for any of them, but have often 
endeavored to escape from them, into the ease and free- 
dom of a private scene, where a man may go his own 
way and his own pace, in the common paths and circles 
of life. The measure of choosing well is whether a 
man likes what he has chosen, which, I thank God, has 
befallen me ; and though among the follies of my life, 
building and planting have not been the least, and have 



THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 835 

cost me more than I have the confidence to own ; yet 
they have been fully recompensed by the sweetness and 
satisfaction of this retreat, where, since my resolution 
taken of never entering again into any public employ- 
ments, I have passed five years without ever once going 
to town, though I am almost in sight of it, and have a 
house there always ready to receive me. Nor has this 
been any sort of affectation, as some have thought it, 
but a mere want of desire or humor to make so small 
a remove ; for when I am in this corner, I can truly 
say with Horace, Me quoties reficit^ ^c. 

" Me, when the cold Digentian stream revives, 
What does my friend believe I think or ask ? 
Let me yet less possess, so I may live, 
Whate'er of life remains, unto myself. 
May I have books enough; and one year's store, 
Not to depend upon each doubtful hour: 
This is enough of mighty Jove to pray. 
Who, as he pleases, gives and takes away." 

The writings of Temple are, in general, after this 
easy copy. On one occasion, indeed, his wit, which 
was mostly subordinate to nature and tenderness, has 
seduced him into a string of felicitous antitheses ; 
which, it is obvious to remark, have been a model to 
Addison and succeeding essayists. " Who would not 
be covetous, and with reason," he says, "if health 
could be purchased with gold ? who not ambitious, if 
it were at the command of power, or restored by 
honor ? but, alas ! a white staff will not help gouty 
feet to walk better than a common cane ; nor a blue 
ribbon bind up a wound so well as a fillet. The glitter 
of gold, or of diamonds, will but hurt sore eyes instead 
of curing them ; and an aching head will be no more 
eased by wearing a crown than a common nightcap." 



836 THE GENTEEL STYLE IN WRITING. 

In a far better style, and more accordant with his 
Dwn humor of plainness, are the concluding sentences 
of his " Discourse upon Poetry." Temple took a part 
in the controversy about the ancient and the modern 
learning ; and, with that partiality so natural and so 
graceful in an old man, whose state engagements had 
left him little leisure to look into modern productions, 
while his retirement gave him occasion to look back 
upon the classic studies of his youth, — decided in favor 
of the latter. " Certain it is," he says, " that, whether 
the fierceness of the Gothic humors, or noise of their 
perpetual wars, frighted it away, or that the unequal 
mixture of the modern languages would not bear it, — 
the great heights and excellency both of poetry and 
music fell with the Roman learning and empire, and 
have never since recoA^ered the admiration and ap- 
plauses that before attended them. Yet, such as they 
are amongst us, they must be confessed to be the softest 
and the sweetest, the most general and most innocent 
amusements of common time and life. They still find 
room in the courts of princes, and the cottages of 
shepherds. They serve to revive and animate the dead 
calm of poor and idle lives, and to allay or divert the 
violent passions and perturbations of the greatest and 
the busiest men. And both these effects are of equal 
use to human life ; for the mind of man is like the sea, 
which is neither agreeable to the beholder nor the 
voyager, in a calm or in a storm, but is so to both 
when a little agitated by gentle gales ; and so the 
mind, when moved by soft and easy passions or aftec- 
tions. I know very well that many who pretend to be 
wise by the forms of being grave, are apt to despise 
both poetry and music, as toys and trifles too light for 



BARBARA S . 337 

the use or entertainment of serious men. But who- 
ever find themselves wholly insensible to their charms, 
would, I think, do well to keep their own counsel, for 
fear of reproaching their own temper, and bringing the 
goodness of their natures, if not of their understandings, 
into question. While this world lasts, I doubt not but 
the pleasure and request of these two entertainments 
will do so too ; and happy those that content them- 
selves with these, or any other so easy and so innocent, 
and do not trouble the world or other men, because 
they cannot be quiet themselves, though nobody hurts 
them." " When all is done (he concludes), human 
life is at the greatest and the best but like a froWard 
child, that must be played with, and humored a little, 
to keep it quiet, till it falls asleep, and then the care is 
over." 



BAEBARA S- 



On the noon of the 14th of November, 1743 or 4, I 
forget which it was, just as the clock had struck one, 
Barbara S , with her accustomed punctuality, as- 
cended the long rambling staircase, with awkward 
interposed landing-places, which led to the office, or 
rather a sort of box with a desk in it, whereat sat the 
then Treasurer of (what few of our readers may re- 
member) the Old Bath Theatre. All over the island 
it was the custom, and remains so I believe to this day, 
for the players to receive their weekly stipend on the 
Saturday. It was not much that Barbara had to claim. 

VOL. III. 22 



838 BARBARA S 



This little maid had just entered her eleventh year ; 
but her important station at the theatre, as it seemed to 
her, with the benefits which she felt to accrue from her 
pious application of her small earnings, had given an 
air of womanhood to her steps and to her behavior. 
You would have taken her to have been at least five 
years older. 

Till latterly she had merely been employed in cho- 
ruses, or where children were wanted to fill up the 
scene. But the manager, observing a diligence and 
adroitness in her above her age, had for some few 
months past intrusted to her the performance of whole 
parts. You may guess the self-consequence of the 
promoted Barbara. She had already drawn tears in 
young Arthur ; had rallied Richard with infantine 
petulance in the Duke of York ; and in her turn had 
rebuked that petulance when she was Prince of Wales. 
She would have done the elder child in Morton's 
pathetic afterpiece to the life ; but as yet the " Chil- 
dren in the Wood " was not. 

Long after this little girl was grown an aged woman, 
I have seen some of these small parts, each making two 
or three pages at most, copied out in the rudest hand 
of the then prompter, who doubtless transcribed a little 
more carefully and fairly for the grown-up tragedy 
ladies of the establishment. But such as they were, 
blotted and scrawled, as for a child's use, she kept them 
all ; and in the zenith of her after reputation it was a 
delightful sight to behold them bound up in costliest 
morocco, each single, — each small part making a hook^ 
— with fine clasps, glit-splashed, &c. She had con- 
scientiously kept them as they had been delivered to 
her; not a blot had been effaced or tampered with. 



BARBARA S . 339 

They were precious to her for their affecting remem- 
brancings. They were her principia, her rudiments ; 
the elementary atoms ; the httle steps by which she 
pressed forward to perfection. " What," she would 
say, " could India-rubber, or a pumice-stone, have 
done for these darlings ? " 

I am in no hurry to begin my story, — indeed 1 
have little or none to tell, — so I will just mention an 
observation of hers connected with that interestino; 
time. 

Not long before she died I had been discoursing with 
her on the quantity of real present emotion which a 
great tragic performer experiences during acting. I 
ventured to think, that though in the first instance such 
players must have possessed the feelings which they so 
powerfully called up in others, yet by frequent repeti- 
tion those feelings must become deadened in great 
measure, and the performer trust to the memory of 
past emotion, rather than express a present one. She 
indignantly repelled the notion, that with a truly great 
tragedian the operation, by which such effects were 
produced upon an audience, could ever degrade itself 
into what was purely mechanical. With much deli- 
cacy, avoiding to instance in her se?/-experience, she 
told me, that so long ago as when she used to play the 
part of the Little Son to Mrs. Porter's Isabella, (I 
think it was,) when that impressive actress has been 
bending over her in some heart-rending colloquy, she 
has felt real hot tears come trickling from her, which 
(to use her powerful expression) have perfectly scalded 
her back. 

I am not quite so sure that it was Mrs. Porter ; but 
it was some great actress of that day. The name is 



340 BARBARA S- 



Indifferent ; but the fact of the scalding tears I most 
distinctly remember. 

I was always fond of the society of players, and am 
not sure that an impediment in my speech (which 
certainly kept me out of the pulpit) even more than 
certain personal disqualifications, which are often got 
over in that profession, did not prevent me at one time 
of life from adopting it. I have had the honor (I must 
ever call it) once to have been admitted to the tea- 
table of Miss Kelly. I have played at serious whist 
with Mr. Lis ton. I have chatted with ever good- 
humored Mrs. Charles Kemble. I have conversed as 
friend to friend with her accomplished husband. I 
have been indulged with a classical conference with 
Macready ; and with a sight of the Player-picture 
gallery, at Mr. Mathews's, when the kind owner, to 
remunerate me for my love of the old actors (whom he 
loves so much), went over it with me, supplying to his 
capital collection, what alone the artist could not give 
them — voice ; and their living motion. Old tones, 
half-faded, of Dodd, and Parsons, and Baddeley, have 
lived again for me at his bidding. Only Edwin he 

could not restore to me. I have supped with ; 

but I am growing a coxcomb. 

As I was about to say, — at the desk of the then 
treasurer of the old Bath theatre, — not Diamond's, — 
presented herself the little Barbara S . 

The parents of Barbara had been in reputable cir- 
cumstances. The father had practised, I believe, as an 
apothecary in the town. But his practice, from causes 
which I feel my own infirmity too sensibly that way to 
arraign, — or perhaps from that pure infelicity which 
accompanies some people in their walk through life, 



BARBARA S . 341 

and which it is impossible to lay at the door of impru- 
dence, — was now reduced to nothing. They were in 
fact in the very teeth of starvation, when the manager, 
who knew and respected them in better days, took the 
little Barbara into his company. 

At the period I commenced with, her slender earn- 
ings were the sole support of the family, including two 
younger sisters. I must throw a veil over some morti- 
fying circumstances. Enough to say, that her Satur- 
day's pittance was the only chance of a Sunday's 
(generally their only) meal of meat. 

One thing I will only mention, that in some child's 
part, where in her theatrical character she was to sup 
off a roast fowl (O joy to Barbara !) some comic actor, 
who was for the night caterer for this dainty — in the 
misguided humor of his part, threw over the dish such 
a quantity of salt (O grief and pain of heart to Bar- 
bara !) that when she crammed a portion of it into her 
mouth, she was obliged sputteringly to reject it ; and 
what with shame of her ill-acted part, and pain of real 
appetite at missing such a dainty, her little heart sobbed 
almost to breaking, till a flood of tears, which the well- 
fed spectators were totally unable to comprehend, mer- 
cifully relieved her. 

This was the little starved, meritorious maid, who 
stood before old Ravenscroft, the treasurer, for her 
Saturday's payment. 

Ravenscroft was a man, I have heard many old 
theatrical people besides herself say, of all men least 
calculated for a treasurer. He had no head for ac- 
counts, paid away at random, kept scarce any books, 
and summing up at the week's end, if he found him- 
self a pound or so deficient, blest himself that it was no 
worse. 



342 BAEBARA S- 



Now Barbara's weekly stipend was a bare half 
guinea. By mistake he popped into her hand — a 
whole one. 

Barbara tripped away. 

She was entirely unconscious at first of the mistake : 
God knows, Ravenscroft would never have discov- 
ered it. 

But when she had got down to the first of those 
uncouth landing-places, she became sensible of an 
unusual weight of metal pressing her little hand. 

Now mark the dilemma. 

She w^as by nature a good child. From her parents 
and those about her she had imbibed no contrarv 
influence. But then they had taught her nothing. 
Poor men's smoky cabins are not always porticos of 
moral philosophy. This little maid had no instinct to 
evil, but then she might be said to have no fixed 
principle. She had heard honesty commended, but 
never dreamed of its application to herself. She 
thought of it as something which concerned grown-up 
people, men and women. She had never known temp- 
tation, or thought of preparing resistance against it. 

Her first impulse was to go back to the old treasurer, 
and explain to him his blunder. He was already so 
confused with age, besides a natural want of punctual- 
ity, that she would have had some difiiculty in making 
him understand it. She saw that in an instant. And 
then it was such a bit of money ! and then the image 
of a larger allowance of butcher' s-meat on their table 
next day came across her, till her little eyes glistened, 
and her mouth moistened. But then Mr. Ravenscroft 
had always been so good-natured, had stood her friend 
behind the scenes, and even recommended her promo- 



BARBAEA S . 343 

tion to some of her little parts. But again the old man 
was reputed to be worth a world of money. He was 
supposed to have fifty pounds a year clear of the the- 
atre. And then came staring upon her the figures of 
her little stockingless and shoeless sisters. And when 
she looked at her own neat white cotton stockings, 
which her situation at the theatre had made it indis- 
pensable for her mother to provide for her, with hard 
straining and pinching from the family stock, and 
thought how glad she should be to cover their poor feet 
with the same, — and how then they could accompany 
her to rehearsals, which they had hitherto been pre- 
cluded from doing, by reason of their unfashionable 
attire, — in these thoughts she reached the second land- 
ing-place, — the second, I mean, from the top, — for 
there was still another left to traverse. 

Now virtue support Barbara ! 

And that never-failing friend did step in, — for at 
that moment a strength not her own, I have heard her 
say, was revealed to her, — a reason above reasoning, 
— and without her own agency, as it seemed (for she 
never felt her feet to move) she found herself trans- 
ported back to the individual desk she had just quitted, 
and her hand in the old hand of Ravenscroft, who in 
silence took back the refunded treasure, and who had 
been sitting (good man) insensible to the lapse of min- 
utes, which to her were anxious ages, and from that 
moment a deep peace fell upon her heart, and she knew 
the quality of honesty. 

A year or two's unrepining application to her profes- 
sion brightened up the feet, and the prospects, of her 
little sisters, set the whole family upon their legs again, 
and released her from the difficulty of discussing moral 
dogmas upon a landing-place. 



344 THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 

I have heard her say that it was a surprise, not much 
short of mortification to her, to see the coolness with 
which the old man pocketed the diflference, which had 
caused her such mortal throes. 

This anecdote of herself I had in the year 1800, 
from the mouth of the late Mrs. Crawford,* then sixty- 
seven years of age, (she died soon after,) and to her 
struggles upon this childish occasion I have sometimes 
ventured to think her indebted for that power of rend- 
ing the heart in the representation of conflicting emo- 
tions, for which in after years she was considered as 
little inferior (if at all so in the part of Lady Ran- 
dolph) even to Mrs. Siddons. 



THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 

IN A LETTER TO R S ', ESQ. 

Though in some points of doctrine, and perhaps of 
discipline, I am diffident of lending a perfect assent to 
that church which you have so worthily Mstorified, yet 
may the ill time never come to me, when with a chilled 
heart or a portion of irreverent sentiment, I shall enter 
her beautiful and time-hallowed edifices. Judge then 
of my mortification when, after attending the choral 
anthems of last Wednesday at Westminster, and being 
desirous of renewing my acquaintance, after lapsed 

* The maiden name of this lady was Street, which she changed by- 
successive marriages, for those of Dancer, Barr}^, and Crawford. She was 
Mrs. Crawford, a third time a widow, when I knew her. 



THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 345 

years, with the tombs and antiquities there, I found 
myself excluded ; turned out like a dog, or some pro- 
fane person, into the common street, with feelings not 
very congenial to the place, or to the solemn service 
which I had been listening to. It was a jar after that 
music. 

You had your education at Westminster ; and doubt- 
less among those dim aisles and cloisters, you must 
have gathered much of that devotional feeling in those 
young years, on which your purest mind feeds still — 
and may it feed ! The antiquarian spirit, strong in 
you, and gracefully blending ever with the religious, 
may have been sown in you among those wrecks of 
splendid mortality. You owe it to the place of your 
education ; you owe it to your learned fondness for the 
architecture of your ancestors ; you owe it to the ven- 
erableness of your ecclesiastical establishment, which 
is daily lessened and called in question through these 
practices — to speak aloud your sense of them ; never 
to desist raising your voice against them till they be 
totally done away with and abolished ; till the doors of 
Westminster Abbey be no longer closed against the 
decent, though low-in-purse, enthusiast, or blameless 
devotee, who must commit an injury against his family 
economy, if he would be indulged with a bare admis- 
sion within its walls. You owe it to the decencies 
which you wish to see maintained, in its impressive 
services, that our Cathedral be no longer an object of 
inspection to the poor at those times only, in which 
they must rob from their attendance on the worship 
every minute which they can bestow upon the fabric. 
In vain the public prints have taken up this subject, in 
/ain such poor nameless writers as myself express their 



346 THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 

indignation. A word from you, Sir, — a hint in your 
Journal, — would be sufficient to fling open the doors of 
the Beautiful Temple again, as we can remember them 
when we were boys. At that time of life, what would 
the imaginative faculty (such as it is) in both of us, 
have suffered, if the entrance to so much reflection had 
been obstructed by the demand of so much silver ! If 
we had scraped it up to gain an occasional admission 
(as we certainly should have done), would the sight of 
those old tombs have been as impressive to us (while 
we have been weighing anxiously prudence against sen- 
timent) as when the gates stood open as those of the 
adjacent Park ; when we could walk in at any time, as 
the mood brought us, for a shorter, or longer time, as 
that lasted ? Is the being shown over a place the same 
as silently for ourselves detecting the genius of it ? In 
no part of our beloved Abbey now can a person find 
entrance (out of service time) under the sum of two 
shillings. The rich and the great will smile at the 
anticlimax, presumed to lie in these two short words. 
But you can tell them. Sir, how much quiet worth, 
how much capacity for enlarged feeling, how much 
taste and genius, may coexist, especially in youth, with 
a purse incompetent to this demand. A respected 
friend of ours, during his late visit to the metropolis, 
presented himself for admission to St. Paul's. At the 
same time a decently clothed man, with as decent a 
wife and child, were bargaining for the same indul- 
gence. The price was only twopence each person. 
The poor but decent man hesitated, desirous to go in ; 
but there were three of them, and he turned away re- 
luctantly. Perhaps he wished to have seen the tomb 
of Nelson. Perhaps the Interior of the Cathedral was 



THE TOMBS IN THE ABBEY. 347 

his object. But in the state of his finances, even six- 
pence might reasonably seem too much. Tell the 
Aristocracy of the country (no man can do it more 
impressively) ; instruct them of what value these insig- 
nificant pieces of money, these minims to their sight, 
may be to their humbler brethren. Shame these Sellers 
out of the Temple. Stifle not the suggestions of your 
better nature with the pretext, that an indiscriminate 
admission would expose the Tombs to violation, lie- 
member your boy-days. Did you ever see, or hear, of 
a mob in the Abbey, while it was free to all ? Do the 
rabble come there, or trouble their heads about such 
speculations ? It is all that you can do to drive them 
into your churches ; they do not voluntarily offer them- 
selves. They have, alas ! no passion for antiquities; for 
tomb of king or prelate, sage ac poet. If they had, 
they would be no longer the rabble. 

For forty years that I have known the Fabric, the 
only well-attested charge of violation adduced, has 
been — a ridiculous dismemberment committed upon 
the efiigy of that amiable spy. Major Andre. And is 
it for this — the wanton mischief of some school-boy, 
fired perhaps with raw notions of Transatlantic Free- 
dom — -or the remote possibility of such a mischief oc- 
curring again, so easily to be prevented by stationing 
a constable within the walls, if the vergers are incom- 
petent to the duty — is it upon such wretched pre- 
tences that the people of England are made to pay a 
new Peter's Pence so long abrogated ; or must content 
themselves with contemplating the ragged Exterior of 
their Cathedral ? The mischief was done about the 
time that you were a scholar there. Do you know 
anything about the unfortunate relic? 



348 AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 



AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 

Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep 
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas? 

I DO not know when I have experienced a stranger 
sensation than on seeing my old friend G. D., who 
had been paying me a morning visit a few Sundays 
back, at my cottage at Islington, upon taking leave, 
instead of turning down the right-hand path by which 
he had entered — with staff in hand, and at noonday 
deliberately march right forwards into the midst of 
the stream that runs by us, and totally disappear. 

A spectacle like this at dusk would have been ap- 
palling enough ; but in the broad open daylight, to 
witness such an unreserved motion towards self-de- 
struction in a valued friend, took from me all power 
of speculation. 

How I found my feet, I know not. Consciousness 
was quite gone. Some spirit, not my own, whirled 
me to the spot. I remember nothing but the silvery 
apparition of a good white head emerging ; nigh 
which a staff (the hand unseen that wielded it) 
pointed upwards, as feeling for the skies. In a mo- 
ment (if time was in that time) he was on my 
shoulders, and I — ; freighted with a load more pre- 
cious than his who bore Anchises. 

And here I cannot but do justice to the officious 
zeal of sundry passers-by, who albeit arriving a little 
too late to participate in the honors of the rescue, in 
philanthropic shoals came thronging to communicate 
their advice as to the recovery ; prescribing variously 



AMICUS EEDIVIVUS. 349 

the application, or non-application, of salt, &c., to the 
person of the patient. Life meantime was ebbing fast 
away, amidst the stifle of conflicting judgments, when 
one, more sagacious than the rest, by a bright thought, 
proposed sending for the Doctor. Trite as the counsel 
was, and impossible, as one should think, to be missed 
on, — shall I confess ? — in this emergency it was to 
me as if an Angel had spoken. Great previous exer- 
tions, — and mine had not been inconsiderable, — are 
commonly followed by a debility of purpose. This 
was a moment of irresolution. 

MoNOCULUs, — for so, in default of catching his true 
name, I choose to designate the medical gentleman 
who now appeared, — is a grave, middle-aged person, 
who, without having studied at the college, or truckled 
to the pedantry of a diploma, hath employed a great 
portion of his valuable time in experimental processes 
upon the bodies of unfortunate fellow-creatures, in 
whom the vital spark, to mere vulgar thinking, would 
seem extinct, and lost forever. He omitted no occasion 
of obtruding his services, from a case of common sur- 
feit suffocation to the ignobler obstructions, sometimes 
induced by a too wilful application of the plant cavb- 
nobis outwardly. But though he declineth not alto- 
gether these drier extinctions, his occupation tendeth, 
for the most part, to water-practice ; for the conven- 
ience of which, he hath judiciously fixed his quarters 
near the grand repository of the stream mentioned, 
where day and night, from his little watchtower, at 
the Middleton's Head, he listeneth to detect the wrecks 
of drowned mortality, — partly, as he saith, to be upon 
the spot, — and partly, because the liquids which he 
useth to prescribe to himself, and his patients, on these 



850 AMICUS EEDIVIVUS. 

distressing occasions, are ordinarily more conveniently 
to be found at these common hostleries than in the 
shops and phials of the apothecaries. His ear hath 
arrived to such finesse by practice, that it is reported 
he can distinguish a plunge at a half fiirlong distance ; 
and can tell if it be casual or deliberate. He weareth 
a medal, suspended over a suit, originally of a sad 
brown, but which, by time and frequency of nightly 
divings, has been dinged into a true professional sable. 
He passeth by the name of Doctor, and is remarkable 
for wanting his left eye. His remedy — after a suf- 
ficient application of w^arm blankets, friction, &c., is a 
simple tumbler or more, of the purest Cognac, with 
water, made as hot as the convalescent can bear it. 
Where he findeth, as in the case of my friend, a 
squeamish subject, he condescendeth to be the taster ; 
and showeth, by his own example, the innocuous 
nature of the prescription. Nothing can be more kind 
or encouraging than this procedure. It addeth confi- 
dence to the patient, to see his medical adviser go hand 
in hand with himself in the remedy. When the doctor 
swalloweth his own draught, what peevish invalid can 
reftise to pledge him in the potion ? In fine, Monoc- 
ULUS is a humane, sensible man, who, for a slender 
pittance, scarce enough to sustain life, is content to 
wear it out in the endeavor to save the lives of others, 
— his pretensions so moderate, that with difficulty I 
could press a crown upon him, for the price of restor- 
ing the existence of such an invaluable creature to 
society as G. D. 

It was pleasant to observe the effect of the subsiding 
alarm upon the nerves of the dear absentee. It seemed 
to have given a shake to memory, calling up notice 



AMICUS KEDIVIVUS. 351 

after notice of all the providential deliverances he had 
experienced in the course of his long and innocent life. 
Sitting up in my couch, — my couch which, naked and 
void of furniture hitherto, for the salutary repose which 
it administered, shall be honored with costly valance, 
at some price, and henceforth be a state-bed at Cole- 
brook, — he discoursed of marvellous escapes — by 
carelessness of nurses — by pails of gelid, and kettles 
of the boiling element, in infancy, — by orchard pranks, 
and snapping twigs, in school-boy frolics — by descent 
of tiles at Trumpington, and of heavier tomes at Pem- 
broke, — by studious w^atchings, inducing frightful vigil- 
ance, — by want, and the fear of want, and all the sore 
throbbings of the learned head. Anon, he would burst 
out into little fragments of chanting — of songs long 
ago — ends of deliverance hymns, not remembered 
before since childhood, but coming up now, when his 
heart was made tender as a child's, — for the tremor 
cordis^ in the retrospect of a recent deliverance, as in 
a case of impending danger, acting upon an innocent 
heart, will produce a self-tenderness, which we should 
do ill to christen cowardice ; and Shakspeare, in the 
latter crisis, has made his good Sir Huo-h to remem- 
ber the sitting by Babylon, and to mutter of shallow 
rivers. 

Waters of Sir Hugh Middleton — what a spark you 
were like to have extino-uished forever I Your salu- 
brious streams to this City, for now near two centuries, 
would hardly have atoned for w^hat you were in a 
moment washing away. Mockery of a river, — liquid 
artifice, — wretched conduit ! henceforth rank with 
canals, and sluggish aqueducts. Was it for this, that 
smit in boyhood with the explorations of that Abys- 



352 AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 

sinian traveller, I paced the vales of Amwell to ex- 
plore your tributary springs, to trace your salutary 
waters sparkling through green Hertfordshire, and cul- 
tured Enfield parks ? — Ye have no swans — no Naiads 
• — no river God, — or did the benevolent hoary aspect 
of my friend tempt ye to suck him in, that ye also 
might have the tutelary genius of your waters ? 

Had he been drowned in Cam, there would have 
been some consonancy in it ; but what willows had ye 
to wave and rustle over his moist sepulture ? — or, 
having no name^ besides that unmeaning assumption of 
eternal novity^ did ye think to get one by the noble 
prize, and henceforth to be termed the Stream Dy- 

ERIAN ? 

And could such spacious virtue find a grave 
Beneath the iinposthumed bubble of a wave ? 

I protest, George, you shall not venture out again — 
no, not by daylight — without a sufficient pair of spec- 
tacles, — in your musing moods especially. Your ab- 
sence of mind we have borne, till your presence of 
body came to be called in question by it. You shall 
not go wandering into Euripus with Aristotle, if we 
can help it. Fie, man, to turn dipper at your years, 
after your many tracts in favor of sprinkling only ! 

I have nothing but water in my head o'nights since 
this frightful accident. Sometimes I am with Clarence 
in his dream. At others, I behold Christian beginning 
to sink, and crying out to his good brother Hopefiil, 
(that is, to me,) '^ I sink in deep waters ; the billows 
go over my head, all the waves go over me. Selah." 
Then I have before me Palinurus, just letting go the 
steerage. I cry out too late to save. Next follow — a 
mournfiil procesvsion — suicidal faces ^ saved against their 



AMICUS REDIVIVUS. 353 

will from drowning ; doleftiUy trailing a length of re- 
luctant grateftilness, with ropy weeds pendent from 
locks of watchet hue, — constrained Lazari, — Pluto's 
half-subjects, — stolen fees from the grave, — bilking 
Charon of his fare. At their head Arion — or is it 
G. D. ? — in his singing garments marcheth singly, 
with harp in hand, and votive garland, which Machaon 
(or Dr. Hawes) snatcheth straight, intending to sus- 
pend it to the stern God of Sea. Then follow dismal 
streams of Lethe, in which the half-drenched on earth 
are constrained to drown downright, by wharves where 
Ophelia twice acts her muddy death. 

And, doubtless, there is some notice in that invisible 
world, when one of us approacheth (as my friend did 
so lately) to their inexorable precincts. When a soul 
knocks once, twice, at death's door, the sensation 
aroused within the palace must be considerable ; and 
the grim Feature, by modern science so often dispos- 
sessed of his prey, must have learned by this time to 
pity Tantalus. 

A pulse assuredly was felt along the line of the 
Elysian shades, when the near arrival of G. D. was 
announced by no equivocal indications. From their 
seats of Asphodel arose the gentler and the graver 
ghosts — poet, or historian — of Grecian or of Roman 
lore, — to crown with unfading chaplets the half-finished 
love-labors of their unwearied scholiast. Him Mark- 
land expected, — him Tyrwhitt hoped to encounter, — 
him the sweet lyrist of Peter House, whom he had 
barely seen upon earth,* with newest airs prepared to 

greet ; and patron of the gentle Christ's boy, — 

who should have been his patron through life, — the 

* Graium tantuvi vidit. 
VOL. Ill 23 



354 SIK PHILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS. 

mild Askew, with longing aspirations leaned foremost 
from his venerable JEsculapian chair, to welcome into 
that happy company the matured virtues of the man, 
whose tender scions in the boy he himself upon earth 
had so prophetically fed and watered. 



SOME SONNETS OF SIR PHILIP SYDNEY. 

Sydney's Sonnets — I speak of the best of them — 
are among the very best of their sort. They fall below 
the plain moral dignity, the sanctity, and high yet 
modest spirit of self-approval, of Milton, in his com- 
positions of a similar structure. They are in truth 
what Milton, censuring the Arcadia, says of that work, 
(to which they are a sort of after- tune or application,) 
" vain and amatorious " enough, yet the things in their 
kind (as he confesses to be true of the romance) may 
be "fall of worth and wit." They savor of the Cour- 
tier, it must be allowed, and not of the Commonwealths- 
man. But Milton was a Courtier when he wrote the 
Masque at Ludlow Castle, and still more a Courtier 
when he composed the Arcades. When the national 
struggle was to begin, he becomingly cast these vanities 
behind him ; and if the order of time had thrown Sir 
Philip upon the crisis which preceded the Revolution, 
there is no reason why he should not have acted the 
same part in that emergency, which has glorified the 
name of a later Sydney. He did not want for plain- 
ness or boldness of spirit. His letter on the French 



SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS. 355 

match may testify he could speak his mind freely to 
Princes. The times did not call him to the scaffold. 
The Sonnets which we often est call to mind of 
Milton were the compositions of his maturest years. 
Those of Sydney, which I am about to produce, were 
written in the very heyday of his blood. They are 
stuck full of amorous fancies — far-fetched conceits, 
befitting his occupation : for True Love thinks no 
labor to send out Thoughts upon the vast, and more 
than Indian voyages, to bring home rich pearls, out- 
landish wealth, gums, jewels, spicery, to sacrifice in 
self-depreciating similitudes, as shadows of true amia- 
bilities in the Beloved. We must be Lovers — or at 
least the cooling touch of time, the circum prcecordia 
frigus must not have so damped our faculties, as to 
take away our recollection that we were once so — 
before we can duly appreciate the glorious vanities, and 
graceful hyperboles, of the passion. The images which 
lie before our feet (though by some accounted the only 
natural) are least natural for the high Sydnean love to 
express its fancies by. They may serve for the loves 
of Tibullus, or the dear Author of the Schoolmistress ; 
for passions that creep and whine in Elegies and Pas- 
toral Ballads. I am sure Milton never loved at this 
rate. I am afraid some of his addresses (^ad Leonoram 
I mean) have rather erred on the farther side ; and 
that the poet came not much short of a religious 
indecorum, when he could thus apostrophize a singing- 
girl : — 

Angelas unicuique suus (sic credite gentes) 

Obtigit gethereis ales ab ordinibus. 
Quid mirum, Leonora, tibi si gloria major, 

Nam tua prassentem vox sonat ipsa Deum? 
Aut Deus, aut vacui cert6 mens tertia coeli, 



356 SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS. 

Per tua secreto guttura serpit agens ; 
Serpit agens, facilisque docet mortalia corda 

Sensim immortali assuescere posse sono. 
Quod si cuncta quidem Deus est, per cukctaque fusus, 
In te una loquituk, c^eteka mutus habet. 

This is loving in a strange fashion ; and it requires 
some candor of construction (besides the shght darken- 
ing of a dead language) to cast a veil over the ugly 
appearance of something very like blasphemy in the last 
two verses. I think the Lover would have been stag- 
gered, if he had gone about to express the same thought 
in English. I am sure Sidney has no flights like this. 
His extravaganzas do not strike at the sky, though he 
takes leave to adopt the pale Dian into a fellowship 
with his mortal passions. 



With how sad steps, Moon, thou climb'st the skies; 

How silently; and with how wan a face ! 

What ! may it be, that even in heavenly place 

That busy Archer his sharp arrows tries ? 

Sure, if that long-with- love-acquainted eyes 

Can judge of love, thou feel'st a lover's case; 

1 read it in thy looks ; thy languisht grace 

To me, that feel the like, thy state descries. 

Then, even of fellowship, Moon, tell me, 

Is constant love deem'd there but want of wit? 

Are beauties there as proud as here they be? 

Do they above love to be loved, and yet 

Those lovers scorn, whom that love doth possess ? 

Do they call virtue there — ungratefulness ! 

The last line of this poem is a little obscured by 
transposition. He means, Do they call ungratefiilness , 
there a virtue ? 

II. 

Come, Sleep, Sleep, the certam knot of peace, 
The baiting place of wit, the balm of woe, 



SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS. 357 

The poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, 
The indifferent judge between the high and low ; 
With shield of proof shield me from out the prease * 
Of those fierce darts despair at me doth throw ; 

make in me those civil wars to cease : 

1 will good tribute pay, if thou do so. 

Take thou of me sweet pillows, sweetest bed; 
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light ; 
A rosy garland, and a weary head. 
And if these things, as being thine by right, 
Move not they heavy grace, thou shalt in me, 
Livelier than elsewhere, Stella's image see. 

III. 

The curious wits, seeing dull pensiveness 
Bewray itself in my long-settled eyes, 
Whence those same fumes of melancholy rise, 
With idle pains, and missing aim, do guess. 
Some, that know how my spring I did address, 
Deem that my Muse some fruit of knowledge plies; 
Others, because the Prince my service tries, 
Think, that I think state errors to redress ; 
But harder judges judge, ambition's rage. 
Scourge of itself, still climbing slippery place, 
Holds my young brain captived in golden cage. 
fools, or overwise ! alas, the race 
Of all my thoughts hath neither stop nor start. 
But only Stella's eyes, and Stella's heart. 

IV- 

Because I oft in dark abstracted guise 
Seem most alone in greatest company. 
With dearth of words or answers quite awry 
To them that would make speech of speech arise ; 
They deem, and of their doom the rumor flies. 
That poison foul of bubbling Pride doth lie 
So in my swelling breast, that only I 
Fawn on myself, and others do despise ; 
Yet Pride, I think, doth not my soul possess 
Which looks too oft in his unflattering glass ; 
But one worse fault — Ambition — I confess, 
That makes me oft my best friends overpass, 
Unseen, unheard — while Thought to highest place 
Bends all his powers, even unto Stella's grace. 

* Press. 



358 SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS, 



Having this day, my horse, my hand, ray lance, 
Guided so well that I obtained the prize, 
Both by the judgment of the English eyes, 
And of some sent from that sweet enemy, — France ; 
Horsemen my skill in horsemanship advance ; 
Townsfolk my strength; a daintier judge applies 
His praise to slight, which from good use doth rise ; 
Some lucky wits impute it but to chance ; 
Others, because of both sides I do take 
My blood from them, who did excel in this, 
Think Nature me a man of arms did make. 
How far they shot awry ! the true cause is, 
Stella looked on, and from her heavenly face 
Sent forth the beams which made so fair my race. 

VI. 

In martial sports I had my cunning tried. 

And yet to break more staves did me address, 

While with the people's shouts (I must confess) 

Youth, luck, and praise, even fill'd my veins with pride 

When Cupid having me (his slave) descried 

In Mars's livery, prancing in the press, 

" What now. Sir Fool ! " said he : "I would no less ; 

Look here, I say." I look'd, and Stella spied. 

Who hard by made a window send forth light. 

My heart then quaked, then dazzled were mine eyes, 

One hand forgot to rule, th' other to fight ; 

Nor trumpet's sound I heard, nor friendly cries. 

My foe came on, and beat the air for me — 

Till that her blush made me my shame to see. 

VII. 

No more, my dear, no more these counsels try ; 

give my passions leave to run their race ; 
Let Fortune lay on me her worst disgrace; 

Let folk o'ercharged with brain against me cry; 
Let clouds bedim my face, break in mine eye; 
Let me no steps, but of lost labor, trace ; 
Let all the earth with scorn recount my case, — 
But do not will me from m.y love to fly. 

1 do not envy Aristotle's wit, 

Nor do aspire to Csesar's bleeding fame ; 

Nor aught do care, though some above me sit; 

Nor hope, nor wish, another course to frame, 



SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS. 359 

Bui that which once may win thy cruel heart 
Thou art my wit, and thou my virtue art. 

VIII. 

Love still a bo}', and oft a wanton, is, 

School'd only by his mother's tender eye; 

What wonder then, if he his lesson miss, 

When for so soft a rod dear play he try ? 

And yet my Star, because a sugar'd kiss 

In sport I suck'd, while she asleep did lie, 

Doth lour, nay chide, nay threat, for only this. 

Sweet, it was saucy Love, not humble I. 

But no 'scuse serves ; she makes her wrath appear 

In beauty's throne, — see now who dares come near, 

Those scarlet judges, threat'ning bloody pain? 

heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face 
Anger invests with such a lovely grace, 
That anger's self I needs must kiss again. 

IX. 

1 never drank of Aganippe well. 
Nor ever did in shade of Tempe sit. 

And Muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell ; 

Poor layman I, for sacred rites unfit. 

Some do I hear of Poet's fury tell, 

But (God wot) wot not what they mean by it; 

And this I swear by blackest brook of hell, 

I am no pick-purse of another's wit. 

How falls it then, that with so smooth an ease 

My thoughts I speak, and what I speak doth flow 

In verse, and that my verse best wits doth please '? 

Guess me the cause — what is it thus ? — fye, no. 

Or so ? — much less. How then ? sure thus it is, 

My lips are sweet, inspired with Stella's kiss. 

X. 

Of all the kings that ever here did reign, 
Edward, named Fourth, as first in praise I name, 
Not for his fair outside, nor well-lined brain, — 
Although less gifts imp feathers oft on Fame. 
Nor that he could, young-wise, wise-valiant, frame 
His sire's revenge, join'd with a kingdom's gain; 
And, gain'd by Mars «ould yet mad Mars so tame, 
That Balance weigh'd what Sword did late obtain. 
Nor that he made the Floure-de-luce so 'fraid. 



360 SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS. 

Though strongly hedged of bloody Lions' paws, 
That witty Lewis to him a tribute paid. 
Nor this, nor that, nor any such small cause, — 
But only, for this worthy knight durst prove 
To lose his crown rather than fail his love. 

XI. 

happy Thames, that didst my Stella bear, 

1 saw thyself, with many a smiling line 
Upon thy cheerful face, Joy's livery wear, 
While those fair planets on thy streams did shine; 
The boat for joy could not to dance forbear. 
While wanton winds, with beauty so divine 
Ravish' d, stay'd not, till in her golden hair 
They did themselves (0 sweetest prison) twine. 
And fain those MoVs youth there would their stay 
Have made ; but forced by nature still to fly, 
First did with puffing kiss those locks display 
She, so dishevell'd, blush'd; from window I 
With sight thereof cried out, fair disgrace, 

Let honor's self to thee grant highest place ! 



Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be ; 
And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet, 
Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet, 
More soft than to a chamber melody ; 
Now blessed You bear onward blessed Me 
To Her, where I my heart safe left shall meet, 
My Muse and I must you of duty greet 
With thanks and wishes, wishing thankfully, 
Be you still fair, honor'd by public heed. 
By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot; 
Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed. 
And that you know, I envy you no lot 
Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss, 
Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss. 

Of the foregoing, the first, the second, and the last 
sonnet, are my favorites. But the general beauty of 
them all is, that they are so perfectly characteristical. 
The spirit of '' learning and of chivalry," — of which 
union, Spenser has entitled Sydney to have been the 



SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS. 361 

" president," — shines through them. I confess I can 
see nothing of the "jejune" or "frigid" in them; 
much less of the "stiff" and "cumbrous," — which I 
have sometimes heard objected to the Arcadia. The 
verse runs off swiftly and gallantly. It might have 
been tuned to the trumpet ; or tempered (as him- 
self expresses it) to " trampling horses' feet." They 
abound in felicitous phrases, — 

heav'nly Fool, thy most kiss-worthy face — 

8th Sonnet. 
Sweet pillows, sweetest bed; 
A chamber deaf to noise, and blind to light; 
A rosy garland, and a weary head. 

2d Sonnet. 
That sweet enemy, — France — 

5th Sonnet. 

But they are not rich in words only in vague and 
unlocalized feelings, — the failing too much of some 
poetry of the present day, — they are full, material, and 
circumstantiated. Time and place appropriates every 
one of them. It is not a fever of passion wasting itself 
upon a thin diet of dainty words, but a transcendent 
passion pervading and illuminating action, pursuits, 
studies, feats of arms, the opinions of contemporaries 
and his judgment of them. An historical thread runs 
through them, which almost affixes a date to them ; 
marks the when and where they were written. 

i liave dwelt the longer upon what I conceive the 
merit of these poems, because I have been hurt by the 
wantonness (I wish I could treat it by a gentler name) 
with which W. H. takes every occasion of insulting the 
memory of Sir Phihp Sydney. But the decisions of 
the Author of Table Talk, &c., (most profound and 
subtle where they are, as for the most part, just,) are 



362 SIR PHILIP SYDNEY'S SONNETS. 

more safely to be relied upon, on subjects and authors 
he has a partiality for, than on such as he has con- 
ceived an accidental prejudice against. Milton wrote 
Sonnets, and was a king-hater ; and it was congenial 
perhaps to sacrifice a courtier to a patriot. But I was 
unwilling to lose a fine idea from my mind. The noble 
images, passions, sentiments, and poetical delicacies of 
character, scattered all over the Arcadia, (spite of some 
stiffiiess and encumberment,) justify to me the char- 
acter which his contemporaries have left us of the 
writer. I cannot think with the Critic, that Sir Philip 
Sydney was that opprobrious tiling which a foolish 
nobleman in his insolent hostility chose to term him. 
I call to mind the epitaph made on him, to guide 
me to juster thoughts of him ; and I repose upon 
the beautiful lines in the " Friend's Passion for his 
Astrophel," printed with the Elegies of Spenser and 
others. 



You knew — who knew not Astrophel ? 
(That I should live to say I knew, 
And have not in possession still!) — 
Things known permit me to renew — 
Of him you know his merit such, 
I cannot say — you hear — too much. 

Within these woods of Arcady 

He chief delight and pleasure took; 

And on the mountain Partheny, 

Upon the crystal liquid brook, 
The Muses met him every day, 
That taught him sing, to write, and say. 

When he descended down the mount, 
His personage seemed most divine : 
A thousand graces one might count 
Upon his lovely cheerful eyne. 

To hear him speak, and sweetly smile, 
You were in Paradise the while. 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 363 

A sweet attractive kind of grace ; 
A full assurance given by looks ; 
Continual comfort in a face^ 
The lineaments of Gospel books — 

I trow that count'nance cannot lye, 

Whose thoughts are legible in the eye. 

***** 

Above all others this is he, 
Which erst approved in his song, 
That love and honor might agree, 
And that pure love will do no wrong. 

Sweet saints, it is no sin or blame 

To love a man of virtuous name. 

Did never love so sweetly breathe 
In any mortal breast before : 
Did never Muse inspire beneath 
A Poet's brain with finer store. 

He wrote of Love with high conceit. 

And Beauty rear'd above her height. 

Or let any one read the deeper sorrows' (grief run- 
ning into rage) in the Poem, — the last in the collec- 
tion accompanying the above, — which from internal 
testimony I believe to be Lord Brooke's, — beginning 
with "Silence angmenteth grief," — and then seriously 
ask himself, whether the subject of such absorbing and 
confounding regrets could have been that thing which 
Lord Oxford termed him. 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 

Dan Stuart once told us, that he did not remember 
that he ever deliberately walked into the Exhibition at 



364 NEWSPAPEKS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 

Somerset House in his life. He might occasionally 
have escorted a party of ladies across the way that 
were going in ; but he never went in of his own head. 
Yet the office of The Morning Post newspaper stood 
then just where it does now, — we are carrying you 
back, Reader, some thirty years or more, — with its 
gilt-globe-topt front facing that emporium of our ar- 
tists' grand Annual Exposure. We sometimes wish 
that we had observed the same abstinence with Daniel. 

A word or two of D. S. He ever appeared to us 
one of the finest-tempered of Editors. Perry, of The 
Morning Chronicle, was equally pleasant, with a dash, 
no slight one either, of the courtier. S. was frank, 
plain, and English all over. We have worked for both 
these gentlemen. 

It is soothing to contemplate the head of the Ganges ; 
to trace the first little bubblings of a mighty river, 

With holy reverence to approach the rocks, 
Whence gHde the streams renowned in ancient song. 

Fired with a perusal of the Abyssinian Pilgrim's 
exploratory ramblings after the cradle of the infant 
Nilus, we well remember on one fine summer holiday 
(a "whole day's leave" we called it at Christ's Hos- 
pital) sallying forth at rise of sun, not very well pro- 
visioned either for such an undertaking, to trace . the 
current of the New River — Middletonian stream ! — 
to its scaturient source, as we had read, in meadows by 
fair Amwell. Gallantly did we commence our solitary 
quest, — for it was essential to the dignity of a Discov- 
ery, that no eye of schoolboy, save our own, should 
beam on the detection. By flowery spots, and verdant 
lanes skirting Hornsey, Hope trained us on in many a 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 365 

baffling turn ; endless, hopeless meanders, as it seemed ; 
or as if the jealous waters had dodged us, reluctant to 
have the humble spot of their nativity revealed ; till 
spent, and nigh famished, before set of the same sun, 
we sat down somewhere by Bowes Farm near Totten- 
ham, with a tithe of our proposed labors only yet 
accomplished ; sorely convinced in spirit, that that 
Brucian enterprise was as yet too arduous for our 
young shoulders. 

Not more refreshing to the thirsty curiosity of the 
traveller is the tracing of some mighty waters up to 
their shallow fontlet, than it is to a pleased and candid 
reader to go back to the inexperienced essays, the first 
callow flights in authorship, of some established name 
in literature ; from the Gnat which preluded to the 
JEneid, to the Duck which Samuel Johnson trod on. 

In those days every Morning Paper, as an essential 
retainer to its establishment, kept an author, who was 
bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs. 
Sixpence a joke — and it was thought pretty high too 
— was Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in these 
cases. The chat of the day, scandal, but, above all, 
dreBS^ fiirnished the material. The length of no para- 
graph w^as to exceed seven lines. Shorter they might 
be, but they must be poignant. 

A fashion o? flesh, or rather jpm^-colored hose for the 
ladies, luckily coming up at the juncture when we were 
on our probation for the place of Chief Jester to S.'s 
Paper, established our reputation in that line. We 
were pronounced a " capital hand." O the conceits 
which we varied upon red in all its prismatic differ- 
ences ! from the trite and obvious flower of Cytherea, 
to the flaming costume of the lady that has her sitting 



SQ6 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 

upon " many waters." Then there was the collateral 
topic of ankles. What an occasion to a truly chaste 
writer, like ourself, of touching that nice brink, and yet 
never tumbling over it, of a seemingly ever approx- 
imating something " not quite proper ; " while, like a 
skilful posture-master, balancing betwixt decorums and 
their opposites, he keeps the line, from which a hair's 
breadth deviation is destruction ; hoA^ering in the con- 
fines of light and darkness, or where " both seem 
either ; " a hazy uncertain delicacy ; Autolycus-like 
in the Play, still putting off his expectant auditory with 
" Whoop, do me no harm, good man ! " But above 
all, that conceit arrided us most at that time, and still 
tickles our midriff to remember, where, allusively to 
the flight of Astrsea — ultima Ccelestum terras reliquit 

— we pronounced — in reference to the stockings still 

— that Modesty, taking her einal leave of mor- 
tals, HER LAST Blush was visible in her ascent to 
THE Heavens by the tract of the glov^^ing instep. 
This might be called the crowning conceit ; and was 
esteemed tolerable writing in those days. 

But the fashion of jokes, with all other things, passes 
away ; as did the transient mode which had so favored 
us. The ankles of our fair friends in a few weeks be- 
gan to reassume their whiteness, and left us scarce a leg 
to stand upon. Other female whims followed, but none 
methought so .pregnant, so invitatory of shrewd con- 
ceits, and more than single meanings. 

Somebody has said, that to swallow six crossbuns 
daily, consecutively for a fortnight, would surfeit the 
stoutest digestion. But to have to furnish as many 
jokes daily, and that not for a fortnight, but for a long 
twelvemonth, as we were constrained to do, was a little 



NEWSPAPEES THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 367 

harder exaction. " Man goetli forth to his work until 
the evening," — from a reasonable hour in the morn- 
ing, we presume it was meant. Now, as our main oc- 
cupation took us up from eight till five every day in the 
City ; and as our evening hours, at that time of life, 
had generally to do with anything rather than business, 
it follows, that the only time we could spare for this 
manufactory of jokes — our supplementary livelihood, 
that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and 
cheese — was exactly that part of the day which (as 
we have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly de- 
nominated No Man's Time ; that is, no time in which 
a man ought to be up, and awake, in. To speak more 
plainly, it is that time of an hour, or an hour and a 
half's duration, in which a man, whose occasions call 
him up so preposterously, has to wait for his break- 
fast. 

O those headaches at dawn of day, when at five, or 
half-past five in summer, and not much later in the 
dark seasons, we were compelled to rise, having been 
perhaps not above four hours in bed, — (for we were no 
go-to-beds with the lamb, though we anticipated the 
lark ofttimes in her rising, — we like a parting cup at 
midnight, as all young men did before these effeminate 
times, and to have our friends about us, — we were not 
constellated under Aquarius, that watery sign, and 
therefore incapable of Bacchus, cold, washy, bloodless, 
— we were none of your Basilian water-sponges, nor 
had taken our degrees at Mount Ague, — we were right 
toping Capulets, jolly companions, we and they,) — but 
to have to get up, as we said before, curtailed of half 
our fair sleep, fasting, with only a dim vista of refresh- 
ing bohea, in the distance, — to be necessitated to rouse 



368 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 

ourselves at the detestable rap of an old hag of a domes- 
tic, who seemed to take a diabolical pleasure in her 
announcement that it was " time to rise ; " and whose 
chappy knuckles we have often yearned to amputate, 
and string them up at our chamber-door, to be a terror 

to all such unseasonable rest-breakers in future 

" Facil " and sweet, as Virgil sings, had been the 
" descending " of the overnight, balmy the first sink- ^ 
ing of the heavy head upon the pillow ; but to get 
up, as he goes on to say, 

revocare gradus, superasque evadere ad auras 



and to get up moreover to make jokes with malice pre- 
pended, - — there was the "labor," there the "work." 

No Egyptian taskmaster ever devised a slavery like 
to that, our slavery. No fractious operants ever turned 
out for half the tyranny which this necessity exercised 
upon us. Half a dozen jests in a day, (bating Sundays 
too,) why, it seems nothing ! We make twice the 
number every day in our lives as a matter of course, 
and claim no Sabbatical exemptions. But then they 
come into our head. But when the head has to go out 
to them, — when the mountain must go to Mahomet, — 

Reader, try it for once, only for one short twelve- 
month. 

It was not every week that a fashion of pink stock- 
ings came up ; but mostly, instead of it, some rugged, 
untractable subject ; some topic impossible to be con- 
torted into the risible ; some feature, upon which no 
smile could play ; some flint, from which no process 
of ingenuity could procure a scintillation. There they 
lay ; there your appointed tale of brick-making was set 
before you, which you must finish, with or without 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 369 

straw, as it happened. The craving Dragon, — the 
Public^ — hke him in Bel's temple, — must be fed ; it 
expected its daily rations ; and Daniel, and ourselves, 
to do us justice, did the best we could on this side 
burstincr him. 

While we were wringing out coy sprightlinesses for 
The Post, and writhing under the toil of what is called 
" easy writing," Bob Allen, our quondam schoolfellow, 
was tapping his impracticable brains in a like service 
for the " Oracle." Not that Robert troubled himself 
much about wit. If his paragraphs had a sprightly air 
about them, it was sufficient. He carried |his noncha- 
lance so far at last, that a matter of intelligence, and 
that no very important one, was not seldom palmed 
upon his employers for a good jest ; for example sake, — 
'''• Walking yesterday morning casually down SnowHill^ 
who should we meet hut Mr. Deputy Humphreys ! we re- 
joice to add^ that the worthy Deputy appeared to enjoy a 
good state of health. We do not ever remember to have 
seen him look better.'^'' This gentleman so surprisingly 
met upon Snow Hill, from some peculiarities in gait or 
gesture, was a constant butt for mirth to the small 
paragraph-mongers of the day ; and our friend thought 
that he mioht have his flins: at him with the rest. We 
met A. in Holborn shortly after this extraordinary ren- 
counter, which he told with tears of satisfaction in his 
eyes, and chuckling at the anticipated effects of its an- 
nouncement next day in the paper. We did not quite 
comprehend where the wit of it lay at the time ; nor 
was it easy to be detected, when the thing came out 
advantaged by type and letter-press. He had better 
have met anything that morning than a Common 
Councilman. His services were shortly after dis- 

VOL. III. 24 



d/0 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 

pensed with, on the plea that his paragraphs of late 
had been deficient in point. The one in question, it 
must be owned, had an air, in the opening especially, 
proper to awaken curiosity ; and the sentiment, or 
moral, wears the aspect of humanity and good neigh- 
borly feeling. But somehow the conclusion was not 
judged altogether to answer to the magnificent promise 
of the premises. We traced our friend's pen after- 
wards in the " True Briton," the " Star," the " Trav- 
eller," — from all which he was successively dismissed, 
the Proprietors having " no further occasion for his 
services." Nothing was easier than to detect him. 
When wit failed, or topics ran low, there constantly 
appeared the following, — '•^ It is not generally knoivn 
that the three Blue Balls at the Pawnbrokers' shojjs are 
the ancient arms of Lomhardy. The Lombards were the 
first money-brokers in Europe.''"' Bob has done more to 
set the public right on this important point of blazonry, 
than the w^hole College of Heralds. 

The appointment of a regular wit has long ceased 
to be a part of the economy of a Morning Paper. 
Editors find their own jokes, or do as well without 
them. Parson Este, and Topham, brought up the set 
custom of " witty paragraphs " first in the " World." 
Boaden was a reigning paragraphist in his day, and 
succeeded poor Allen in the " Oracle." But, as we 
said, the fashion of jokes passes away ; and it would 
be difficult to discover in the biographer of Mrs. 
Siddons any traces of that vivacity and fancy which 
charmed the whole town at the commencement of 
the present century. Even the prelusive delicacies of 
the present writer, — the curt " Astrsean allusion" — 
would be thought pedantic and out of date in these days. 



NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 371 

From the office of The Morning Post, (for we may as 
well exhaust our Newspaper Reminiscences at once,) 
by change of property in the paper, we were trans- 
ferred, mortifying exchange ! to the office of The Albion 
Newspaper, late Rackstrow's Museum, in Fleet Street. 
What a transition, — from a handsome apartment, from 
rosewood desks, and silver inkstands, to an office, — no 
office, but a den rather, but just redeemed from the 
occupation of dead monsters, of which it seemed redo- 
Lmt, — from the centre of loyalty and fashion, to a 
focus of vulgarity and sedition ! Here, in murky closet, 
inadequate from its square contents to the receipt of the 
two bodies of Editor and humble paragraph-maker, 
:together at one time, sat, in the discharge of his new 
editorial functions, (the "Bigod" of Elia,) the re- 
doubted John Fenwick. 

F., without a guinea in his pocket, and having left 
not many in the pockets of his friends whom he might 
command, had purchased (on tick doubtless) the whole 
and sole Editorship, Proprietorship, with all the rights 
and titles (such as they were worth) of The Albion 
from one Lovell ; of whom we know nothing, save that 
he had stood in the pillory for a libel on the Prince of 
Wales. With this hopeless concern — for it had been 
sinking ever since its commencement, and could now 
reckon upon not more than a hundred subscribers — F. 
resolutely determined upon pulling down the govern- 
ment in the first instance, and making both our for- 
tunes by way of corollary. For seven weeks and more 
did this infatuated democrat go about borrowing seven- 
shilling pieces, and lesser coin, to meet the daily de- 
mands of the Stamp-Office, which allowed no credit to 
publications of that side in politics. An outcast from 



372 NEWSPAPERS THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO. 

politer bread, we attached our small talents to the for- 
lorn fortunes of our friend. Our occupation now was 
to write treason. 

Recollections of feelings, — which were all that now 
remained from our first boyish heats kindled by the 
French Revolution, when, if we were misled, we erred 
in the company of some who are accounted very good 
men now, — rather than any tendency at this time to 
Republican doctrines, — assisted us in assuming a style 
of writing, while the paper lasted, consonant in no very 
under-tone, — to the right earnest fanaticism of F. 
Our cue was now to insinuate, rather than recommend, 
possible abdications. Blocks, axes, Whitehall tribunals, 
were covered with flowers of so cunning a periphrasis 

— as Mr. Bayes says, never naming the thing directly 

— that the keen eye of an Attorney-General was insuf- 
ficient to detect the lurking snake among them. There 
were times, indeed, when we sighed for our more gen- 
tlemanlike occupation under Stuart. But with change 
of masters it is ever change of service. Already one 
paragraph, and another, as we learned afterwards from 
a gentleman at the Treasury, had begun to be marked 
at that office, with a view of its being submitted at 
least to the attention of the proper Law Officers, — 
when an unlucky, or rather lucky epigram from our 

pen, aimed at Sir J ^s M h, who was on the eve 

of departing for India to reap the fruits of his apos- 
tacy, as F. pronounced it, (it is hardly worth partic- 
ularizing,) happening to offend the nice sense of Lord, 
or, as he then delighted to be called. Citizen Stanhope, 
deprived F. at once of the' last hopes of a guinea from 
the last patron that had stuck by us ; and breaking up 
our establishment, left us to the safe, but somewhat 



ON THE PEODUCTIONS OF MODEKN ART. 373 

mortifying, neglect of the Crown Lawyers. It was 
about this time, or a little earlier, that Dan Stuart 
made that curious confession to us, that he had " never 
deliberately walked into an Exhibition at Somerset 
House in his life." 



BARRENNESS OF THE IMAGINATIVE FACULTY IN 
THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 

HoGAHT'H excepted, can we produce any one painter 
within the last fifty years, or since the humor of exhib- 
iting began, that has treated a story imaginatively ? 
By this we mean, upon whom his subject has so acted, 
that it has seemed to direct him — not to be arranged 
by him? Any upon whom its leading or collateral 
points have impressed themselves so tyrannically, that 
he dared not treat it otherwise, lest he should falsify a 
revelation? Any that has imparted to his composi- 
tions, not merely so much truth as is enough to convey 
a story with clearness, but that individualizing prop- 
erty, which should keep the subject so treated distinct 
in feature from every other subject, however similar, 
and to common apprehensions almost identical ; so as 
that we might say, this and this part could have found 
an appropriate place in no other picture in the world 
but this ? Is there anything in modern art — we will 
not demand that it should be equal — but in any way 
analogous to what Titian has effected, in that wonder- 
ful bringing together of two times in the '' Ariadne," 
m the National Gallery ? Precipitous, with his reeling 



374 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 

satyr rout about him, re-peopling and re-illumining sud- 
denly the waste places, drunk with a new fury beyond 
the grape, Bacchus, born in fire, firelike flings himself 
at the Cretan. This is the time present. With this 
telling of the story — an artist, and no ordinary one, 
might remain richly proud. Guido, in his harmonious 
version of it, saw no further. But from the depths of 
the imaginative spirit Titian has recalled past time, and 
laid it contributory with the present to one simulta- 
neous effect. With the desert all ringing with the 
mad cyTnbals of his followers, made lucid with the 
presence and new offers of a god, — as if unconscious 
of Bacchus, or but idly casting her eyes as upon some 
unconcerning pageant, — her soul undistracted from 
Theseus, — Ariadne is still pacing the solitary shore in 
as much heart-silence, and in almost the same local 
solitude, with which she awoke at daybreak to catch 
the forlorn last glances of the sail that bore away the 
Athenian. 

Here are two points miraculously co-uniting ; fierce 
society, with the feeling of solitude still absolute ; noon- 
day revelations, with the accidents of the dull gray 
dawn unquenched and lingering ; the present Bacchus, 
with the past Ariadne ; two stories, with double Time ; 
separate, and harmonizing. Had the artist made the 
woman one shade less indifferent to the god ; still 
more, had she expressed a rapture at his advent, where 
would have been the story of the mighty desolation of 
the heart previous? merged in the insipid accident of a 
flattering offer met with a welcome acceptance. The 
broken heart for Theseus was not lightly to be pieced 
up by a god. 

We have before us a fine rough print, from a picture 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 375 

by Raphael in the Vatican. It is the Presentation of 
the new-born Eve to Adam by the Almighty. A 
fairer mother of mankind Ave might imagine, and a 
goodlier sire perhaps of men since born. But these 
are matters subordinate to the conception of the situ- 
ation^ displayed in this extraordinary production. A 
tolerably modern artist would have been satisfied with 
tempering certain raptures of connubial anticipation, 
with a suitable acknowledgment to the Giver of the 
blessing, in the countenance of the first bridegroom ; 
something like the divided attention of the child (Adam 
was here a child-man) between the given toy, and the 
mother who had just blest it with the bauble. This is 
the obvious, the first-sight view, the superficial. An 
artist of a higher grade, considering the awfal presence 
they were in, would have taken care to subtract some- 
thing from the expression of the more human passion, 
and to heighten the more spiritual one. This would 
be as much as an exhibition-goer, from the opening of 
Somerset House to last year's show, has been encour- 
aged to look for. It is obvious to hint at a lower ex- 
pression yet, in a picture that, for respects of drawing 
and coloring, might be deemed not wholly inadmissible 
within these art-fostering walls, in which the raptures 
should be as ninety-nine, the gratitude as one, or per- 
haps zero ! By neither the one passion nor the other 
lias Raphael expounded the situation of Adam. Singly 
upon his brow sits the absorbing sense of wonder at the 
created miracle. The moment is seized by the intuitive 
artist, perhaps not self-conscious of his art, in which 
neither of the conflicting emotions — a moment how 
abstracted I — has had time to spring up, or to battle 
for indecorous mastery. We have seen a landscape of 



376 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 

a justly admired neoteric, in whicli he aimed at deline- 
ating a fiction, one of the most severely beautiful in 
antiquity — the gardens of the Hesperides. To do 

Mr. justice, he had painted a laudable orchard, 

with fitting seclusion, and a veritable dragon (of whicli 
a Polypheme, by Poussin, is somehow a fac-simile for 
the situation), looking over into the world shut out 
backwards, so that none but a " still-climbing Her- 
cules " could hope to catch a peep at the admired 
Ternary of Recluses. No conventual porter could 
keep his eyes better than this custos with the ^' lidless 
eyes." He not only sees that none do intrude into that 
privacy, but, as clear as daylight, that none but Her- 
cules aut Diabolus by any manner of means can. So 
far all is well. We have absolute solitude here or no- 
where. Ah extra the damsels are snug enough. But 
here the artist's courage seems to have failed him. He 
began to pity his pretty charge, and, to comfort the 
irksomeness, has peopled their solitude with a bevy of 
fair attendants, maids of honor, or ladies of the bed- 
chamber, according to the approved etiquette at a court 
of the nineteenth century ; giving to the whole scene 
the air of a fete eliampHre^ if we will but excuse the 
absence of the gentlemen. This is well, and Wat- 
teauish. But what is become of the solitary mystery, — 
the 

Daughters three, 
That sing around the golden tree ? 

This is not the way in which Poussin would have 
treated this subject. 

The paintings, or rather the stupendous architectural 
designs, of a modern artist, have been urged as objec- 
tions to the theory of our motto. They are of a char- 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 377 

acter, we confess, to stagger it. His towered struc- 
tures are of the highest order of the material subhme. 
Whether they were dreams, or transcripts of some elder 
workmanship, — Assyrian ruins old, — restored by this 
mighty artist, they satisfy our most stretched and crav- 
ing conceptions of the glories of the antique world. It 
is a pity that they were ever peopled. On that side, 
the imagination of the artist halts, and appears defec- 
tive. Let us examine the point of the story in the 
" Belshazzar's Feast." We will introduce it by an 
apposite anecdote. 

The court historians of the day record, that at the 
first dinner given by the late King (then Prince 
Regent) at the Pavilion, the following characteristic 
frolic was played off. The guests were select and 
admiring ; the banquet profuse and admirable ; the 
lights lustrous and oriental ; the eye was perfectly 
dazzled with the display of plate, among which the 
great gold saltcellar, brought from the regalia in the 
Tower for this especial purpose, itself a tower ! stood 
conspicuous for its magnitude. And now the Rev. 
, the then admired court chaplain, was proceed- 
ing with the grace, when, at a signal given, the lights 
were suddenly overcast, and a huge transparency was 
discovered, in which glittered in gold letters — 

" Brighton — Earthquake — Swallow-up-alive ! " 

Imagine the confusion of the guests ; the Georges and 
garters, jewels, bracelets, moulted upon the occasion ! 
The fans dropped, and picked up the next morning by 
the sly court pages ! Mrs. Fitz-what's-her-name faint- 
ing, and the Countess of holding the smelling- 
bottle, till the good-humored Prince caused harmony to 



378 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 

be restored, by calling in fresh candles, and declaring 
that the whole was nothing but a pantomime hoax^ got 
up by the ingenious Mr. Farley, of Covent Garden, 
from hints which his Royal Highness himself had 
fiirnished ! Then imagine the infinite applause that 
followed, the mutual rallyings, the declarations that 
"they were not much frightened," of the assembled 
galaxy. 

The point of time in the picture exactly answers to 
the appearance of the transparency in the anecdote. 
The huddle, the flutter, the bustle, the escape, the 
alarm, and the mock alarm ; the prettinesses heightened 
by consternation ; the courtier's fear, which was flat- 
tery ; and the lady's, which was affectation ; all that 
we may conceive to have taken place in a mob of 
Brighton courtiers, sympathizing with the well-acted 
surprise of their sovereign ; all this, and no more, is 
exhibited by the well-dressed lords and ladies in the 
Hall of Belus. Just this sort of consternation we have 
seen among a flock of disquieted wild geese at the 
report only of a gun having gone oflP! 

But is this vulgar fright, this mere animal anxiety 
for the preservation of their persons, — such as we 
have witnessed at a theatre, when a slight alarm of fire 
has been given, — an adequate exponent of a super- 
natural terror ? the way in which the finger of God, 
writing judgments, would have been met by the 
withered conscience? There is a human fear, and a 
divine fear. The one is disturbed, restless, and bent 
upon escape. The other is bowed down, effortless, 
passive. When the spirit appeared before Eliphaz in 
the visions of the nio-ht, and the hair of his flesh stood 
up, was it in the thoughts of the Temanite to ring the 



ON THE PEODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 37D 

bell of his chamber, or to call up the servants ? But 
let us see in the text what there is to justify all this 
huddle of vulgar consternation. 

From the words of Daniel it appears that Belshazzar 
had made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and 
drank wine before the thousand. The golden and 
silver vessels are gorgeously enumerated, with the 
princes, the king's concubines, and his wives. Then 
follows, — 

" In the same hour came forth fingers of a man's 
hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the 
plaster of the wall of the king's palace ; and the king 
saw the part of the hand that wrote. Then the king^s 
countenance was chano;ed, and his thouo-hts troubled 
him, so that the joints of his loins w^ere loosened, and 
his knees smote one against another." 

This is the plain text. By no hint can it be other- 
wise inferred, but that the appearance was solely con- 
fined to the fancy of Belshazzar, that his single brain 
was troubled. Not a word is spoken of its being seen 
by any else there present, not even by the queen her- 
self, who merely undertakes for the interpretation of the 
phenomenon, as related to her, doubtless, by her hus- 
band. The lords are simply said to be astonished ; i. e. 
at the trouble and the change of countenance in their 
sovereign. Even the prophet does not appear to have 
seen the scroll, which the king saw. He recalls it 
only, as Joseph did the Dream to the King of Egypt. 
'' Then was the part of the hand sent from him [the 
Lord], and this writing was written." He speaks of 
the phantasm as past. 

Then what becomes of this needless multiplication 
of the miracle ? this message to a royal conscience. 



380 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 

singly expressed, - — for it was said, " Thy kingdom is 
divided," — simultaneously impressed upon the fancies 
of a thousand courtiers, who were implied in it neither 
directly nor grammatically ? 

But admitting the artist's own version of the story, 
and that the sight was seen also by the thousand cour- 
tiers, — let it have been visible to all Babylon, — as the 
knees of Belshazzar were shaken, and his countenance 
troubled, even so would the knees of every man in 
Babylon, and their countenances, as of an individual 
man, have been troubled ; bowed, bent down, so would 
they have remained, stupor-fixed, with no thought of 
struggling with that inevitable judgment. 

Not all that is optically possible to be seen, is to be 
shown in every picture. The eye delightedly dwells 
upon the brilliant individualities in a " Marriage at 
Cana," by Veronese, or Titian, to the very texture 
and color of the wedding-garments, the ring glittering 
upon the bride's fingers, the metal and fashion of the 
wine-pots; for at such seasons there is leisure and 
luxury to be curious. But in a " day of judgment," 
or in a " day of lesser horrors, yet divine," as at the 
impious feast of Belshazzar, the eye should see, as the 
actual eye of an agent or patient in the immediate 
scene would see, only in masses and indistinction. Not 
only the female attire and jewelry exposed to the criti- 
cal eye of fashion, as minutely as the dresses in a Lady's 
Magazine, in the criticized picture, — but perhaps the 
curiosities of anatomical science, and studied diversities 
of posture, in the falling angels and sinners of Michele 
Angelo, — have no business in their great subjects. 
There was no leisure for them. 

By a wise falsification, the great masters of painting 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 381 

got at their true conclusions ; by not showing the actual 
appearances, that is, all that was to be seen at any 
given moment by an indifferent eye, but only what the 
eye might be supposed to see in the doing or suffering 
of some portentous action. Suppose the moment of the 
swaUowing up of Pompeii. There they were to be 
seen, — houses, columns, architectural proportions, dif- 
ferences of public and private buildings, men and 
women at their standing occupations, the diversified 
thousand postures, attitudes, dresses, in some confusion 
truly, but physically they were visible. But what eye 
saw them at that eclipsing moment, which reduces con- 
fusion to a kind of unity, and when the senses are up- 
turned from their proprieties, when sight and hearing 
are a feeling only ? A thousand years have passed, 
and we are at leisure to contemplate the weaver fixed 
standing at his shuttle, the baker at his oven, and to 
turn over with antiquarian coolness the pots and pans 
of Pompeii. 

" Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, 
Moon, in the valley of Ajalon." Who, in reading 
this magnificent Hebraism, in his conception, sees 
aught but the heroic son of Nun, with the outstretched 
arm, and the greater and lesser light obsequious ? 
Doubtless there were to be seen hill and dale, and 
chariots and horsemen, on open plain, or winding by 
secret defiles, and all the circumstances and stratagems 
of war. But whose eyes would have been conscious 
of this array at the interposition of the synchronic 
miracle ? Yet in the picture of this subject by the 
artist of the " Belshazzar's Feast" — no ignoble work 
either — the marshalling and landscape of the war is 
everything, the miracle sinks into an anecdote of the 



382 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 

day ; and the eye may " dart through rank and file 
traverse " for some mmutes, before it shall discover, 
among his armed followers, which is Joshua ! Not 
modern art alone, but ancient, where only it is to be 
found if anywhere, can be detected erring, from defect 
of this imaginative faculty. The world has nothing to 
show of the preternatural in painting, transcending the 
figure of Lazarus bursting his grave-clothes, in the 
great picture at Angerstein's. It seems a thing be- 
tween two beings. A ghastly horror at itself struggles 
with newly apprehending gratitude at second life be- 
stowed. It cannot forget that it was a ghost. It has 
hardly felt that it is a body. It has to tell of the 
world of spirits. Was it from a feeling, that the 
crowd of half-impassioned by-standers, and the still 
more irrelevant herd of passers-by at a distance, who 
have not heard, or but faintly have been told of the 
passing miracle, admirable as they are in design and 
hue — for it is a glorified work — do not respond ade- 
quately to the action — that the single figure of the 
Lazarus has been attributed to Michele Angelo, and 
the mighty Sebastian unfairly robbed of the fame of 
the greater half of the interest ? Now that there were 
not indifferent passers-by within actual scope of the 
eyes of those present at the miracle, to whom the sound 
of it had but faintly, or not at all, reached, it would be 
hardihood to deny ; but would they see them ? or can 
the mind in the conception of it admit of such uncon- 
cerning objects ; can it think of them at all ? or what 
associating league to the imagination can there be 
between the seers, and the seers not, of a presential 
miracle ? 

Were an artist to paint upon demand a picture of a 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 383 

Dryad, we will ask whether, in the present low state 
of expectation, the patron would not, or ought not to 
be fully satisfied with a beautiful naked figure recum- 
bent under wide-stretched oaks ? Disseat those woods, 
and place the same figure among fountains, and fall of 
pellucid water, and you have a — Naiad I Not so in a. 
rough print we have seen after Julio Romano, we think 
— for it is long since — there^ by no process, with mere 
change of scene, could the figure have reciprocated 
characters. Long, grotesque, fantastic, yet with a 
grace of her own, beautiful in convolution and distor- 
tion, linked to her connatural tree, co-twisting with its 
limbs her own, till both seemed either — these, anima- 
ted branches ; those, disanimated members — yet the 
animal and vegetable lives sufficiently kept distinct, — 
his Dryad lay — an approximation of two natures, 
which to conceive, it must be seen ; analogous to, not 
the same with, the delicacies of O vidian transforma- 
tions. 

To the lowest subjects, and, to a superficial compre- 
hension, the most barren, the Great Masters gave lofti- 
ness and fruitfulness. The large eye of genius saw in 
the meanness of present objects their capabilities of 
treatment from their relations to some grand Past or 
Future. How has Raphael — we must still linger about 
the Vatican — treated the humble craft of the ship- 
builder, in his " Building of the Ark ? " It is in that 
scriptural series, to which we have referred, and w^hich, 
judging from some fine rough old graphic sketches of 
them which we possess, seem to be of a higher and 
more poetic grade than even the Cartoons. The dim 
of sight are the timid and the shrinking. There is 
a cowardice in modern art. As the Frenchman, of 



384 ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 

whom Coleridge's friend made the prophetic guess at 
Rome, from the beard and horns of the Moses of 
Michele Angelo collected no inferences beyond that of 
a He Goat and a Cornuto ; so. from this subject, of 
mere mechanic promise, it would instinctively turn 
away, as from, one incapable of investiture with any 
grandeur. The dock-yards at Woolwich would object 
derogatory associations. The depot at Chatham would 
be the mote and the beam in its intellectual eye. But 
not to the nautical preparations in the ship-yards of 
Civita Vecchia did Raphael look for instructions, when 
he imao-ined the Buildino- of the Vessel that was to be 
conservatory of the wrecks of the species of drowned 
mankind. In the intensity of the action, he keeps ever 
out of sight the meanness of the operation. There is 
the Patriarch, in calm forethought, and with holy pre- 
science, giving directions. And there are his agents — 
the solitary but sufficient Three — hewing, sawing, 
every one with the might and earnestness of a Demiur- 
gus ; under some instinctive rather than technical guid- 
ance ! giant-muscled ; every one a Hercules, or liker to 
those Yulcanian Three, that in sounding caverns under 
Mongibello wrought in fire, — Brontes, and black Ster- 
opes, and Pyracmon. So work the workmen that 
should repair a world ! 

Artists again err in the confounding of poetic with 
'pictorial subjects. In the latter, the exterior accidents 
are nearly everything, the unseen qualities as nothing. 
Othello's color, — the infirmities and corpulence of a 
Sir John Falstaff, — do they haunt us perpetually in 
the reading? or are they obtruded upon our concep- 
tions one time for ninety-nine that we are lost in 
admiration at the respective moral or intellectual at- 



ON THE PRODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 385 

tributes of the character? But in a picture Othello 
is always a Blackamoor ; and the other only Plump 
Jack. Deeply corporealized, and enchained hopelessly 
in the grovelling fetters of externality, must be the 
mind, to which, in its better moments, the image of 
the high-souled, high-intelligenced Quixote — the er- 
rant Star of Knighthood, made more tender by eclipse 
— has never presented itself, divested from the unhal- 
lowed accompaniment of a Sancho, or a rabblement at 
the heels of Rosinante. That man has read his book 
by halves ; he has laughed, mistaking his author's 
purport, which was — tears. The artist that pictures 
Quixote (and it is in this degrading point that he is 
every season held up at our Exhibitions) in the shal- 
low hope of exciting mirth, would have joined the 
rabble at the heels of his starved steed. We wish not 
to see that counterfeited, which we would not have 
wished to see in the reality. Conscious of the heroic 
inside of the noble Quixote, who, on hearing that his 
withered person was passing, would have stepped over 
his threshold to gaze upon his forlorn habiliments, and 
the " strange bedfellows which misery brings a man 
acquainted with ? " Shade of Cervantes ! who in thy 
Second Part could put into the mouth of thy Quixote 
those high aspirations of a super-chivalrous gallantry, 
where he replies to one of the shepherdesses, apprehen- 
sive that he would spoil their pretty net-works, and, 
inviting him to be a guest with them, in accents like 
these : " Truly, fairest Lady, Act93on was not more 
astonished when he saw Diana bathing herself at the 
fountain, than I have been in beholding your beauty : 
I commend the manner of your pastime, and thank 
you for your kind offers ; and, if I may serve you, so I 

VOL. III. 25 



386 OX THE PEODUCTIONS OF MODERN ART. 

may be sure you will be obeyed, you may command 
me ; for my profession is this, To show myself thank- 
ful, and a doer of good to all sorts of people, especially 
of the rank that your person shows you to be ; and if 
those nets, as they take up but a little piece of ground, 
should take up the whole world, I would seek out new 
worlds to pass through, rather than break them ; and 
(he adds) that you may give credit to this my exagger- 
ation, behold at least he that promiseth you this, is Don 
Quixote de la Mancha, if haply this name hath come to 
your hearing." Illustrious Romancer! were the "fine 
frenzies," which possessed the brain of thy own Quix- 
ote, a fit subject, as in this Second Part, to be exposed 
to the jeers of Duennas and Serving Men? to be mon- 
stered, and shown up at the heartless banquets of great 
men ? Was that pitiable infirmit}^, which in thy First 
Part misleads him, always from within^ into half-ludi- 
crous, but more than half-compassionable and admirable 
errors, not infliction enough from heaven, that men by 
studied artifices must devise and practise upon the hu- 
mor, to inflame where they should soothe it ? Why, 
Goneril would have blushed to practise upon the abdi- 
cated king at this rate, and the she-wolf Regan not 
have endured to play the pranks upon his fled wits, 
which thou hast made thy Quixote suffer in Duchesses' 
halls, and at the hands of that unworthy nobleman.* 

In the First Adventures, even, it needed all the art 
of the most consummate artist in the Book way that 
the world hath yet seen, to keep up in the mind of the 
reader the heroic attributes of the character without 
relaxing ; so as absolutely that they shall suffer no 

* Yet from this Second Part, our cried-up pictures are mostly selected: 
the waiting-women with beards, &c. 



ON THE PEODUCTIONS OF MODEKN ART. 387 

alloy from the debasing fellowship of the clown. If it 
ever obtrudes itself as a disharmony, are we inclined to 
laugh ; or not, rather, to indulge a contrary emotion ? 
— Cervantes, stung, perchance, by the relish with 
which his Reading Public had received the fooleries 
of the man, more to their palates than the generosities 
of the master, in the sequel let his pen run riot, lost 
the harmony and the balance, and sacrificed a great 
idea to the taste of his contemporaries. We know that 
in the present day the Knight has fewer admirers than 
the Squire. Anticipating, what did actually happen to 
him, — as afterwards it did to his scarce inferior fol- 
lower, the Author of " Guzman de Alfarache," — that 
some less knowing hand would prevent him by a 
spurious Second Part ; and judging that it would be 
easier for his competitor to outbid him in the comicali- 
ties, than in the romance^ of his work, he abandoned 
his Knight, and has fairly set up the Squire for his 
Hero. For what else has he unsealed the eyes of 
Sancho ? and instead of that twilight state of semi- 
insanity — the madness at second-hand — the con- 
tagion, caught from a stronger mind infected — that 
war between native cunning, and hereditary deference, 
with which he has hitherto accompanied his master, — 
two for a pair almost, — does he substitute a downright 
Knave, with open eyes, for his own ends only following 
a confessed Madman ; and offering at one time to lay, 
if not actually laying, hands upon him ! From the 
moment that Sancho loses his reverence, Don Quixote 
is become — a treatable lunatic. Our artists handle 
him accordingly. 



388 THE WEDDING. 



THE WEDDING. 

I DO not know when I have been better pleased 
than at being invited last week to be present at the 
wedding of a friend's daughter. I like to make one at 
these ceremonies, which to us old people give back our 
youth in a manner, and restore our gayest season, in 
the remembrance of our own success, or the regrets, 
scarcely less tender, of our own youthful disappoint- 
ments, in this point of a settlement. On these occa- 
sions I am sure to be in good-humor for a week or two 
after, and enjoy a reflected honey-moon. Being with- 
out a family, I am flattered with these temporary adop- 
tions into a friend's family ; I feel a sort of cousinhood, 
or uncleship, for the season ; I am inducted into degrees 
of affinity ; and, in the participated socialities of the 
little community, I lay down for a brief while my soli- 
tary bachelorship. I carry this humor so far, that I 
take it unkindly to be left out, even when a funeral 
is going on in the house of a dear friend. But to 
my subject. 

The union itself had been long settled, but its cele- 
bration had been hitherto deferred, to an almost un- 
reasonable state of suspense in the lovers, by some 
invincible prejudices which the bride's father had un- 
happily contracted upon the subject of the too early 
marriages of females. He has been lecturing any time 
these five years — for to that length the courtship has 
been protracted — upon the propriety of putting off the 
solemnity, till the lady should have completed her five- 
and- twentieth year. We all began to be afraid that a 



THE WEDDING. 389 

suit, which as yet had abated of none of its ardors, 
might at last be lingered on, till passion had time to 
cool, and love go out in the experiment. But a little 
wheedling on the part of his wife, who was by no 
means a party to these overstrained notions, joined to 
some serious expostulations on that of his friends, who, 
from the growing infirmities of the old gentleman, 
could not promise ourselves many years' enjoyment of 
his company, and were anxious to bring matters to a 
conclusion during his lifetime, at length prevailed ; and 
on Monday last the daughter of my old friend. Admiral 

-, having attained the womanly age of nineteen, 

was conducted to the church by her pleasant cousin 

J , who told some few years older. 

Before the youthful part of my female readers ex- 
press their indignation at the abominable loss of time 
occasioned to the lovers by the preposterous notions of 
my old friend, they will do well to consider the reluc- 
tance which a fond parent naturally feels at parting 
with his child. To this unwillingness, I believe, in 
most cases may be traced the difference of opinion on 
this point between child and parent, whatever pre- 
tences of interest or prudence may be held out to cover 
it. The hard-heartedness of fathers is a fine theme for 
romance writers, a sure and moving topic ; but is there 
not something untender, to say no more of it, in the 
hurry which a beloved child is sometimes in to tear 
herself from the paternal stock, and commit herself to 
strange graftings ? The case is heightened where the 
lady, as in the present instance, happens to be an only 
child. I do not understand these matters experimen- 
tally, but I can make a shrewd guess at the wounded 
pride of a parent upon these occasions. It is no new 



390 THE WEDDING. 

observation, I believe, tbat a lover in most cases has no 
rival so much to be feared as the father. Certainly 
there is a jealousy in unparallel subjects^ which is little 
less heart-rending than the passion which we more 
strictly christen by that name. Mothers' scruples are 
more easily got over ; for this reason, I suppose, that 
the protection transferred to a husband is less a deroga- 
tion and a loss to their authority than to the paternal. 
Mothers, besides, have a trembling foresight, which 
paints the inconveniences (impossible to be conceived 
in the same degree by the other parent) of a life of 
forlorn celibacy, which the refusal of a tolerable match 
may entail upon their child. Mothers' instinct is a 
surer guide here, than the cold reasonings of a father 
on such a topic. To this instinct may be imputed, and 
by it alone may be excused, the unbeseeming artifices, 
by which some wives push on the matrimonial projects 
of their daughters, which the husband, however approv- 
ing, shall entertain with comparative indifference. A 
little shamelessness on this head is pardonable. With 
this explanation, forwardness becomes a grace, and 
maternal importunity receives the name of a virtue. 
But the parson stays, while I preposterously assume 
his office ; I am preaching, while the bride is on the 
threshold. 

Nor let any of my female readers suppose that the 
sage reflections which have just escaped me have the 
obhquest tendency of appHcation to the young lady, 
who, it will be seen, is about to venture upon a change 
in her condition, at a mature and competent age^ and 
not without the fullest approbation of all parties. I 
only deprecate very hasty marriages. 

It had been fixed that the ceremony should be gone 



THE WEDDING. 391 

througli at an early hour, to give time for a little 
dejeune afterwards, to which a select party of friends 
had been invited. We were in church a little before 
the clock struck eight. 

Nothing could be more judicious or graceful than the 
dress of the bridemaids — the three charmino; Miss 
Foresters — on this morning. To give the bride an 
opportunity of shining singly, they had come habited 
all in green, I am ill at describing female apparel ; 
but while she stood at the altar in vestments white and 
candid as her thoughts, a sacrificial whiteness, they as- 
sisted in robes, such as might become Diana's nymphs ; 
— Foresters indeed, — as such who had not yet come 
to the resolution of putting off cold virginity. These 
young maids, not being so blest as to have a mother 
living, I am told, keep single for their father's sake, 
and live altogether so happy with their remaining 
parent, that the hearts of their lovers are ever broken 
with the prospect (so inauspicious to their hopes) of 
such uninterrupted and provoking home-comfort. Gal- 
lant girls ! each a victim worthy of Iphigenia ! 

I do not know what business I have to be present in 
solemn places. I cannot divest me of an unseasonable 
disposition to levity upon the most awful occasions. I 
was never cut out for a public functionary. Ceremony 
and I have long shaken hands ; but I could not resist 
the importunities of the young lady's father, whose 
gout unhappily confined him at home, to act as parent 
oh this occasion, and give away the hride. Something 
ludicrous occurred to me at this most serious of all 
moments, — a sense of my unfitness to have the dis- 
posal, even in imagination, of the sweet young creature 
beside me. I fear I was betrayed to some lightness, 



392 THE WEDDING. 

for the awful eye of the parson — and the rector's eye 
of Saint Mildred's in the Poultry is no trifle of a re- 
buke — was upon me in an instant, souring my incipi- 
ent jest to the tristful severities of a funeral. 

This was the only misbehavior which I can plead to 
upon this solemn, occasion, unless what was objected to 
me after the ceremony, by one of the handsome Miss 

T s, be accounted a solecism. She was pleased to 

say that she had never seen a gentleman before me give 
away a bride, in black. Now black has been my ordi- 
nary apparel so long — indeed I take it to be the proper 
costume of an author — • the state sanctions it, — that to 
have appeared in some lighter color would have raised 
more mirth at my expense, than the anomaly had 
created censure. But I could perceive that the bride's 
mother, and some elderly ladies present (God bless 
them 1) would have been well content, if I had come 
in any other color than that. But I got over the omen 
by a lucky apologue, which I remembered out of Pil- 
pay, or some Indian author, of all the birds being in- 
vited to the linnet's wedding, at which when all the 
rest came in their gayest feathers, the raven alone 
apologized for his cloak because " he had no other." 
This tolerably reconciled the elders. But with the 
young people all was merriment, and shaking of hands, 
and congratulations, and kissing away the bride's tears, 
and kissing from her in return, till a young lady, who 
assumed some experience in these matters, having worn 
the nuptial bands some four or five weeks longer than 
her friend, rescued her, archly observing, with half an 
eye upon the bridegroom, that at this rate she would 
have " none left." 

My friend the Admiral was in fine wig and buckle 



THE WEDDING. 393 

on this occasion — a striking contrast to his usual 
neglect of personal appearance. He did not once 
shove up his borrowed locks (his custom ever at his 
morning studies) to betray the few gray stragglers of 
his own beneath them. He wore an aspect of thought- 
ful satisfaction. I trembled for the hour, which at 
length apj)roached, when after a protracted breakfast of 
three hours — if stores of cold fowls, tongues, hams, 
botargoes, dried fruits, wines, cordials, &c., can deserve 
so meagre an appellation — the coach was announced, 
which was come to carry off the bride and bridegroom 
for a season, as custom has sensibly ordained, into the 
country ; upon which design, wishing them a felicitous 
journey, let us return to the assembled guests. 

As when a well-graced actor leaves the stage, 

The eyes of men 

Are idly bent on him that enters next, 

so idly did we bend our eyes upon one another, when 
the chief performers in the morning's pageant had 
vanished. None told his tale. None sipped her glass. 
The poor Admiral made an effort, — it was not much. 
I had anticipated so far. Even the infinity of full 
satisfaction, that had betrayed itself through the prim 
looks and quiet deportment of his lady, began to wane 
into something of misgiving. No one knew whether to 
take their leaves or stay. We seemed assembled upon 
a silly occasion. In this crisis, betwixt tarrying and 
departure, I must do justice to a foolish talent of mine, 
which had otherwise like to have brought me into dis- 
grace in the forepart of the day ; I mean a power, in 
any emergency, of thinking and giving vent to all 
manner of strange nonsense. In this awkward dilemma 



394 THE WEDDING. 

I found it sovereip-n. I rattled off some of mv most 
excellent absurdities. All were willing to be relieved, 
at any expense of reason, from the pressure of the in- 
tolerable vacuum which had succeeded to the morning 
bustle. By this means 1 was fortunate in keeping 
together the better part of the company to a late hour ; 
and a rubber of whist (the Admiral's favorite game) 
with some rare strokes of chance as well as skill, which 
came opportunely on his side, — lengthened out till 
midnight, — dismissed the old gentleman at last to his 
bed with comparatively easy spirits. 

I have been at my old friend's various times since. 
I do not know a visiting place where every guest is so 
perfectly at his ease ; nowhere, where harmony is so 
strangely the result of confusion. Everybody is at 
cross purposes, yet the effect is so much better than 
uniformity. Contradictory orders ; servants pulling 
one way ; master and mistress driving some other, 
yet both diverse ; visitors huddled up in corners ; chairs 
unsymmetrized ; candles disposed by chance ; meals at 
odd hours, tea and supper at once, or the latter preced- 
ing the former; the host and the guest conferring, yet 
each upon a different topic, each understanding him- 
self, neither trying to understand or hear the other ; 
draughts and politics, chess and political economy, 
cards and conversation on nautical matters, going on at 
once, without the hope, or indeed the wish, of distin- 
guishing them, make it altogether the most perfect Con- 
cordia discors you shall meet with. Yet somehow the 
old house is not quite what it should be. The Admiral 
still enjoys his pipe, but he has no Miss Emily to fill it 
for him. The instrument stands where it stood, but 
she is gone, whose delicate touch could sometimes for a 



REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 395 

short minute appease the warring elements. He has 
learnt, as Marvel expresses it, to " make his destiny his 
choice." He bears bravely up, but he does not come 
out with his flashes of wild wit so thick as formerly. 
His sea-songs seldomer escape him. His wife, too, 
looks as if she wanted some younger body to scold and 
set to rights. We all miss a junior presence. It is 
wonderfiil how one young maiden freshens up, and 
keeps green, the paternal roof. Old and young seem 
to have an interest in her, so long as she is not abso- 
lutely disposed of. The youthfalness of the house is 
flown. Emily is married. 



REJOICINGS UPON THE NEW YEAR'S COMING 

OF AGE. 

The Old Year being dead, and the New Year com- 
ing of age, which he does, by Calendar Law, as soon 
as the breath is out of the old gentleman's body, 
nothing would serve the young spark but he must give 
a dinner upon the occasion, to which all the Days in 
the year were invited. The Festivals^ whom he de- 
puted as his stewards, were mightily taken with the 
notion. They had been engaged time out of mind, 
they said, in providing mirth and good cheer for 
mortals below ; and it was time they should have a 
taste of their own bounty. It was stiflly debated 
among them whether the Fasts should be admitted. 
Some said, the appearance of such lean, starved guests, 



896 REJOICINGS UPON THE 

with their mortified faces, would pervert the ends of 
the meeting. But the objection was overruled by 
Christmas Day^ who had a design upon Asli Wednes- 
day (as you shall hear), and a mighty desire to see 
how the old Domine would behave himself in his cups. 
Only the Vigils were requested to come with their 
lanterns, to light the gentlefolks home at night. 

All the Days came to their day. Covers were pro- 
vided for three hundred and sixty-five guests at the 
principal table ; with an occasional knife and fork at 
the sideboard for the Twenty-Ninth of February. 

I should have told you, that cards of invitation had 
been issued. The carriers were the Hours; twelve 
little, merry, whirligig foot-pages, as you should desire 
to see, that went all round, and found out the persons 
invited well enough, with the exception of Easter Day^ 
Shrove Tuesday., and a few such Movables^ who had 
lately shifted their quarters. 

Well, they all met at last, foul Days^ fine Days., all 
sorts of Days., and a rare din they made of it. There 
was nothing but. Hail! fellow Day., — well met, — 
brother Day — sister Day — only Lady Day kept a 
little on the aloof and seemed somewhat scornful. Yet 
some said. Twelfth Day cut her out and out, for she 
came in a tiffany suit, white and gold, like a queen on 
a frost-cake, all royal, glittering, and Epiphanous. The 
rest came, some in green, some in white, — but old Lent 
and his family were not yet out of mourning. Rainy 
Days came in, dripping ; and sunshiny Days helped 
them to change their stockings. Wedding Day was 
there in his marriage finery, a little the worse for wear. 
Pay Day came late, as he always does ; and Doomsday 
sent word — he might be expected. 



NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 397 

April Fool (as my young lord's jester) took upon 
himself to marshal the guests, and wild work he made, 
with it. It would have posed old Erra Pater to have 
found out any given Day in the year, to erect a scheme 
upon — good Day 8^ bad Day 8 were so shuffled together, 
to the confounding of all sober horoscopy. 

He had stuck the Twenty-First of June next to the 
Twenty-Second of December^ and the former looked like 
a Maypole siding a marrow-bone. Ash Wednesday got 
wedged in (as was concerted) betwixt Cliristmas and 
Lord Mayor s Days. Lord ! how he laid about him ! 
Nothing but barons of beef and turkeys would go down 
with him, — to the great greasing and detriment of his 
new sackcloth bib and tucker. And still Christmas 
Day was at his elbow, plying him with the wassail- 
bowl, till he roared, and hiccupp'd, and protested there 
was no faith in dried ling, but commended it to the 
devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious, censorious hy-po- 
crit-crit-critical mess, and no dish for a gentleman. 
Then he dipt his fist into the middle of the great 
custard that stood before his left-hand neighbor^ and 
daubed his hungry beard all over with it, till you would 
have taken him for the Last Day in December^ it so 
hung in icicles. 

At another part of the table. Shrove Tuesday was 
helping the Second of September to some cock broth, — 
which courtesy the latter returned with the delicate 
thigh of a hen pheasant, — so there was no love lost for 
that matter. The Last of Lent was spunging upon 
Shrovetide'' s pancakes ; which April Fool perceiving, 
told him he did well, for pancakes were proper to a 
good fry-day. 

In another part, a hubbub arose about the Thirtieth 



398 REJOICINGS UPON THE 

of January^ who, it seems, being a sour puritanic char- 
acter, that thought nobody's meat good or sanctified 
enough for him, had smuggled into the room a calf's 
head, which he had had cooked at home for that pur- 
pose, thinking to feast thereon incontinently ; but as it 
lay in the dish March Manyweathers^ who is a very fine 
lady, and subject to the meagrims, screamed out there 
was a " human head in the platter," and raved about 
Herodias's dauo-hter to that decree, that the obnoxious 
viand was obliged to be removed ; nor did she recover 
her stomach till she had gulped down a Restorative^ 
confected of Oah Apple, which the merry Twenty- 
Ninth of May alway.^ carries about with him for that 
purpose. 

The King's health * being called for after this, a 
notable dispute arose between the Twelfth of August 
(a zealous old Whig gentlewoman), and the Twenty- 
Third of April (a newfangled lady of the Tory 
stamp), as to which of them should have the honor 
to propose it. August grew hot upon the matter, 
affirming time out of mind the prescriptive right to 
have lain with her, till her rival had basely supplanted 
her ; whom she represented as little better than a kept 
mistress, who went about in fine clothes, while she (the 
legitimate Birthday) had scarcely a rag, &c. 

April Fool, being made mediator, confirmed the right 
in the strongest form of words to the appellant, but de- 
cided for peace's sake that the exercise of it should 
remain with the present possessor. At the same time, 
he slyly rounded the first lady in the ear, that an action 
might lie against the Crown for hi-geny. 

It beginning to grow a little duskish, Candlemas 

* King George IV. 



NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 39S 

lustily bawled out for lights, which was opposed by 
all the Bays^ who protested against burning daylight. 
Then fair water was handed round in silver ewers, and 
the same lady was observed to take an unusual time in 
Washing herself. 

May Day^ with that sweetness which is peculiar to 
her, in a neat speech proposing the health of the 
founder, crowned her goblet (and by her example the 
rest of the company) with garlands. This being done, 
the lordly Neio Year from the upper end of the table, 
in a cordial but somewhat lofty tone, returned thanks. 
He felt proud on an occasion of meeting so many of his 
worthy father's late tenants, promised to improve their 
farms, and at the same time to abate (if anything was 
found unreasonable) in their rents. 

At the mention of this, the four Quarter Days in- 
voluntarily looked at each other, and smiled ; April 
Fool whistled to an old tune of " New Brooms ; " and 
a surly old rebel at the farther end of tlie table (who 
was discovered to be no other than the Fifth of Novem- 
her^ muttered out, distinctly enough to be heard by the 
whole company, words to this effect, that " when the 
old one is gone, he is a fool that looks for a better." 
Which rudeness of his, the guests resenting, unani- 
mously voted his expulsion ; and the malecontent was 
thrust out neck and heels into the cellar, as the proper- 
est place for such a houtefeu and firebrand as he had 
shown himself to be. 

Order being restored — the young lord (who, to say 
truth, had been a little ruffled, and put beside his 
oratory) in as few, and yet as obliging words as pos- 
sible, assured them of entire welcome ; and, with a 
graceful turn, singling out poor Twenty-Ninth of Febru- 



400 REJOICINGS UPON THE 

ary^ that had sat all this while mum-chance at the 
sideboard, begged to couple his health with that of the 
good company before him, — - which he drank accord- 
ingly ; observing, that he had not seen his honest face 
any time these four years, — with a numher of endear- 
ing expressions besides. At the same time, removing 
the solitary Day from the forlorn seat which had been 
assigned him, he stationed him at his own board, 
somewhere between the G-reek Calends and Latter 
Lammas. 

Ash Wednesday, being now called upon for a song, 
with his eyes fast stuck in his head, and as well as the 
Canary he had swallowed would give him leave, struck 
up a Carol, which Christmas Lay had taught him for 
the nonce ; and was followed by the latter, who gave 
" Miserere " in fine style, hitting off the mumping 
notes and lengthened drawl of Old Mortification with 
infinite humor. Aj^ril Fool swore they had exchanged 
conditions ; but Grood Friday was observed to look ex- 
tremely grave ; and Sunday held her fan before her 
face, that she might not be seen to smile. 

Shrovetide, Lord Mayor'' s Lay, and April Fool, next 
joined in a glee — 

Which is the properest day to drink? 

in which all the Lays chiming in, made a merry 
burden. 

They next fell to quibbles and conundrums. The 
question being proposed, who had the greatest number 
of followers, — the Quarter Lays said, there could be 
no question as to that ; foi' they had all the creditors in 
the world dogging their heels. But Apnl Fool gave it 
in favor of the Forty Lays before Easter ; because the 



NEW YEAR'S COMING OF AGE. 401 

debtors in all cases outnumbered tbe creditors, and 
they kept lent all the year. 

All this while Valentine's Day kept courting pretty 
May^ who sat next him, slipping amorous hillets-doux 
under the table, till the Dog Days (who are naturally 
of a warm constitution) began to be jealous, and to 
bark and rage exceedingly. April Fool^ who likes a 
bit of sport above measure, and had some pretensions 
to the lady besides, as being but a cousin once re- 
moved, — clapped and halloo'd them on ; and as fast 
as their indignation cooled, those mad wags, the Emher 
Days^ were at it with their bellows, to blow it into a 
flame ; and all was in a ferment ; till old Madam 
Septuagesima (who boasts herself the Mother of the 
Days) wisely diverted the conversation with a tedious 
tale of the lovers which she could reckon when she was 
young ; and of one Master Rogation Day in particular, 
who was forever putting the question to her ; but she 
kept him at a distance, as the chronicle would tell, — 
by which I apprehend she meant the Almanac. Then 
she rambled on to the Days that were gone^ the good old 
Days^ and so to the Days hefore the Floods — which 
plainly showed her old head to be little better than 
crazed and doited. 

Day being ended, the Days called for their cloaks 
and greatcoats, and took their leaves. Lord Mayor'' s 
Day went off in a Mist, as usual ; Shortest Day in a 
deep black Fog, that wrapt the little gentleman all 
round like a hedge-hog. Two Vigils — so watchmen 
are called in heaven — saw Christmas Day safe home, 
— they had been used to the business before. Another 
Vigil — a stout, sturdy, patrole, called the Eve of St. 
Christopher — seeing Ash Wednesday in a condition 

VOL. III. 26 



402 OLD CHINA. 

little better than he should be, — e'en whipt him over 
his shoulders, pick-a-pack fashion, and Old Mortifica- 
tion went floating home singing — 

On the bat's back do I fly, 

and a number of old snatches besides, between drunk 
and sober ; but very few Aves or Penitentiaries (you 
may believe me) were among them. Longest Day set 
off westward in beautiful crimson and gold, — the rest, 
some in one fashion, some in another; but Valentine 
and pretty May took their departure together in one of 
the prettiest silvery twilights a Lover's Day could wish 
to set in. 



OLD CHINA. 



I HAVE an almost feminine partiality for old china. 
When I go to see any great house, I inquire for the 
china-closet, and next for the picture gallery. I can- 
not defend the order of preference, but by saying, that 
we have all some taste or other, of too ancient a date 
to admit of our remembering distinctly that it was an 
acquired one. I can call to mind the first play, and 
the first exhibition, that I was taken to ; but I am not 
conscious of a time when china jars and saucers were 
introduced into my imagination. 

I had no repugnance then — why should I now 
have ? — to those little, lawless, azure-tinctured gro- 
tesques that, under the notion of men and women, float 



OLD CHINA. 403 

about, uncircumscribed by any element, in that world 
before perspective — a china teacup. 

I like to see my old friends — whom distance cannot 
diminish — figuring up in the air (so they appear to 
our optics), yet on Urra firma still, — for so we must in 
courtesy interpret that speck of deeper blue, — which 
the decorous artist, to prevent absurdity, had made to 
spring up beneath their sandals. 

I love the men with women's faces, and the women, 
if possible, with still more womanish expressions. 

Here is a young and courtly Mandarin, handing tea 
to a lady from a salver — two miles off. See how dis- 
tance seems to set off respect ! And here the same 
lady, or another — for likeness is identity on teacups 

— is stepping into a little fairy boat, moored on the 
hither side of this calm garden river, with a dainty 
mincing foot, which in a right angle of incidence (as 
angles go in our world) must infallibly land her in the 
midst of a flowery mead — a furlong off on the other 
side of the same strange stream ! 

Farther on — if far or near can be predicated of 
their world — see horses, trees, pagodas, dancing the 
hays. 

Here — a cow and rabbit couchant, and coextensive, 

— so objects show, seen through the lucid atmosphere 
of fine Cathay. 

I was pointing out to my cousin last evening, over 
our H^'son, (which we are old-fashioned enough to 
drink unmixed still of an afternoon,) some of these 
speeiosa miraeula upon a set of extraordinary old blue 
china (a recent purchase) which we were now for the 
first time using; and could not help remarking, how 
favorable circumstances had been to us of late years, 



404 OLD CHINA. 

that we could afford to please the eye sometimes with 
trifles of this sort — when a passing sentiment seemed 
to overshade the brows of my companion. I am quick 
at detecting these summer clouds in Bridget. 

" I wish the good old times would come again," she 
said, " when we were not quite so rich. I do not 
mean, that I want to be poor ; but there was a middle 
state " — so she was pleased to ramble on, — " in which 
I am sure we were a great deal happier. A purchase 
is but a purchase, now that you have money enough 
and to spare. Formerly it used to be a triumph. 
When we coveted a cheap luxury (and, O ! how much 
ado I had to get you to consent in those times ! ) — we 
were used to have a debate two or three days before, 
and to weigh the for and against^ and think what we 
might spare it out of, and what saving we could hit 
upon, that should be an equivalent. A thing was 
worth buying then, when we felt the money that we 
paid for it. 

"Do you remember the brown suit, which you made 
to hang upon you, till all your friends cried shame 
upon you, it grew so threadbare — and all because of 
that folio Beaumont and Fletcher, which you dragged 
home late at night from Barker's in Co vent Garden ? 
Do you remember how we eyed it for weeks before we 
could make up our minds to the purchase, and had not 
come to a determination till it was near ten o'clock 
of the Saturday night, when you set off from Islington, 
fearing you should be too late, — and when the old 
bookseller with some grumbling opened his shop, and 
by the twinkling taper (for he was setting bedwards) 
lighted out the relic from his dusty treasures, ™ and 
when you lugged it home, wishing it were twice as 



OLD CHINA. 405 

cumbersome, — and when you presented it to me, — 
and when we were exploring the perfectness of it, (^col- 
lating you called it,) — and while I was repairing some 
of the loose leaves with paste, which your impatience 
would not suffer to be left till daybreak, — was there no 
pleasure in being a poor man ? or can those neat black 
clothes which yoil wear now, and are so careful to keep 
brushed, since we have become rich and finical, give 
you half the honest vanity, with which you flaunted it 
about in that overworn suit — your old corbeau — for 
four or five weeks longer than you should have done, 
to pacify your conscience for the mighty sum of fifteen 
— or sixteen shillings was it ? — a great affair we 
thought it then — which you had lavished on the old 
folio. Now you can afford to buy any book that 
pleases you, but I do not see that you ever bring me 
home any nice old purchases now. 

" When you came home with twenty apologies for 
laying out a less number of shillings upon that print 
after Lionardo, which we christened the ' Lady Blanch ; ' 
when you looked at the purchase, and thought of the 
money, — and thought of the money, and looked again 
at the picture, — was there no pleasure in being a poor 
man ? Now, you have nothing to do but to walk into 
Colnaghi's, and buy a w^ilderness of Lionardos. Yet 
do you ? 

" Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to En- 
field, and Potter's bar, and Waltham, when we had a 
holiday — holidays, and all other ftin, are gone now 
we are rich — and the little handbasket in which I 
used to deposit our day's fare of savory cold lamb and 
salad, — and how you would pry about at noontide for 
some decent house, where we might go in and produce 



406 OLD CHINA. 

our store — only paying for the ale that you must call 
for — and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, 
and whether she was likely to allow us a tablecloth, — 
and wish for such another honest hostess, as Izaak 
Walton has described many a one on the pleasant 
banks of the Lea, when he went a-fishing - — and some- 
times they would prove obliging enough, and some- 
times they would look grudgingly upon us, — but we 
had cheerful looks still for one another, and would eat 
our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging Piscator his 
Trout Hall ? Now — when we go out a day's pleasur- 
ing, which is seldom moreover, we ride part of the 
way — and go into a fine inn, and order the best of 
dinners, never debating the expense — which after all, 
never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, 
when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage, and a 
precarious welcome. 

" You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but 
in the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to 
sit when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Sur- 
render of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the 
Children in the Wood, — when we squeezed out our 
shillings a-piece to sit three or four times in a season in 
the one-shilling gallery — where you felt all the time 
that you ought not to have brought me — and more 
strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought me 
— and the pleasure was the better for a little shame, — 
and when the curtain drew up, what cared we for our 
place in the house, or what mattered it where we were 
sitting, when our thoughts were with Rosalind in 
Arden, or with Viola at the Court of Illyria ? You 
used to say, that the Gallery was the best place of all 
for enjoying a play socially, — that the relish of such 



OLD CHINA. 407 

exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency of 
going, — that the company we met there, not being in 
general readers of plays, were obliged to attend the 
more, and did attend, to what was going on, on the 
stage, — because a word lost would have been a chasm, 
which it was impossible for them to fill up. With such 
reflections we consoled our pride then, — and I appeal 
to you, whether, as a woman, I met generally with less 
attention and accommodation than I have done since 
in more expensive situations in the house ? The get- 
ting in indeed, and the crowding up those inconvenient 
staircases was bad enough, — ■ but there was still a law 
of civility to woman recognized to quite as great an ex- 
tent as we ever found in the other passages, — and how 
a little difficulty overcome heightened the snug seat 
and the play, afterwards ! Now we can only pay our 
money and walk in. You cannot see, you say, in the 
galleries now. I am sure we saw, and heard too, well 
enough then, — but sight, and all, I think, is gone with 
our poverty. 

" There was pleasure in eating strawberries, before 
they became quite common — in the first dish of peas, 
while they were yet dear — to have them for a nice 
supper, a treat. What treat can we have now ? If 
we were to treat ourselves now, — that is, to have dain- 
ties a little above our means, it would be selfish and 
wicked. It is the very little more that we allow our- 
selves beyond what the actual poor can get at, that 
makes what I call a treat, — when two people living 
together, as we have done, now and then indulge 
themselves in a cheap luxury, which both like ; while 
each apologizes, and is willing to take both halves of 
the blame to his single share. I see no harm in people 



408 OLD CHINA. 

making much of themselves, in that sense of the word. 
It may give them a hint how to make much of others. 
But now — what I mean by the word — we never do 
make much of ourselves. None but the poor can do it. 
I do not mean the veriest poor of all, but persons as we 
were, just above poverty. 

" I know what you were going to say, that it is 
mighty pleasant at the end of the year to make all 
meet, — and much ado we used to have every Thirty- 
first night of December to account for our exceedings, 
— many a long face did you make over your puzzled 
accounts, and in contriving to make it out how we had 
spent so much — or that we had not spent so much — 
or that it was impossible we should spend so much next 
year, — and still we found our slender capital decreas- 
ing, — but then, — betwixt ways, and projects, and 
compromises of one sort or another, and talk of cur- 
tailing this charge, and doing without that for the 
future, — and the hope that youth brings, and laughing 
spirits, (in which you were never poor till now,) we 
pocketed up our loss, and in conclusion, with ' lusty 
brimmers ' (as you used to quote it out of hearty cheer- 
ful Mr. Cotton., as you called him), we used to wel- 
come in the ' coming guest.' Now we have no reck- 
oning at all at the end of the old year, — no flattering 
promises about the new year doing better for us." 

Bridget is so sparing of her speech on most occasions, 
that when she gets into a rhetorical vein, I am careful 
how I interrupt it. I could not help, however, smiling 
at the phantom of wealth which her dear imagination 

had conjured up out of a clear income of poor 

hundred pounds a year. " It is true we were happier 
when we were poorer, but we were also younger, my 



OLD CHINA. 409 

cousin. I am afraid we must put up with the excess, 
for if we were to shake the superflux into the sea, we 
should not much mend ourselves. That we had much 
to struggle with, as we grew up together, we have rea- 
son to be most thankful. It strengthened, and knit our 
compact closer. We could never have been what we 
have been to each other, if we had always had the 
sufficiency which you now complain of. The resisting 
power, — those natural dilations of the youthful spirit, 
which circumstances cannot straiten, — with us are long 
since passed away. Competence to age is supplement- 
ary youth, a sorry supplement indeed, but I fear the 
best that is to be had. We must ride where we 
formerly walked ; live better and lie softer — and shall 
be wise to do so — than we had means to do in those 
good old days you speak of. Yet could those days re- 
turn, — could you and I once more walk our thirtv 
miles a day, — could Bannister and Mrs. Bland again 
be young, and you and I be young to see them, — 
could the good old one-shilling gallery days return, — 
they are dreams, my cousin, now, — but could you and 
I at this moment, instead of this quiet argument, by 
our well-carpeted fireside, sitting on this luxurious sofa, 
— be once more struggling up those inconvenient stair- 
cases, pushed about, and squeezed, and elbowed by the 
poorest rabble of poor gallery scramblers, — could I 
once more hear those anxious shrieks of yours, — and 
the delicious Thank Cfod, we are safe^ which always 
followed when the topmost stair, conquered, let in the 
first light of the whole cheerful theatre down beneath 
us, — I know not the fathom line that ever touched a 
descent so deep as I would be willing to bury more 
wealth in than Croesus had, or the great Jew R is 



410 THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM. 

supposed to have, to purchase it. And now do just 
look at that merry Uttle Chinese waiter holding an 
umbrella, big enough for a bed-tester, over the head of 
that pretty insipid half Madona-ish chit of a lady in that 
very blue summer-house." 



THE CHILD ANGEL ; A DREAM. 

I CHANCED upon the prettiest, oddest, fantastical 
thing of a dream the other night, that you shall hear 
of. I had been reading the " Loves of the Angels," 
and went to bed with my head full of speculations, sug- 
gested by that extraordinary legend. It had given 
birth to innumerable conjectures ; and, I remember the 
last waking thought, which I gave expression to on my 
pillow, was a sort of wonder " what could come of it." 

I was suddenly transported, how or whither I could 
scarcely make out, — but to some celestial region. It 
was not the real heavens neither — not the downright 
Bible heaven — but a kind of fairy-land heaven, about 
which a poor human fancy may have leave to sport and 
air itself, I will hope, without presumption. 

Methought — what wild things dreams are ! — I was 
present — at what would you imagine ? — at an angcJ's 
gossiping. 

Whence it came, or how it came, or who bid it come, 
or whether it came purely of its own head, neither you 
nor I know — but there lay, sure enough, wrapped in 
its little cloudy swaddling-bands — a Child Angel. 



THE CHILD ANGEL; A DEE AM. 411 

Sun-threads — filmy beams — ran tlirougli the celes- 
tial naperjr of what seemed its princely cradle. All the 
winged orders hovered round, watching when the new- 
born should open its yet closed eyes ; which, when it 
did, first one, and then the other, — with a solicitude 
and apprehension, yet not such as, stained with fear, 
dim the expanding eyelids of mortal infants, but as if to 
explore its path in those its unhereditary palaces, — 
what an inextinguishable titter that time spared not 
celestial visages ! Nor wanted there to my seeming, — 
O the inexplicable simpleness of dreams ! bowls of 
that cheering nectar, 

— which mortals caudle call below. 

Nor were wanting faces of female ministrants, — 
stricken in years, as it might seem, — so dexterous 
were those heavenly attendants to counterfeit kindly 
similitudes of earth, to greet, with terrestrial child- 
rites the young present, which earth had made to 
heaven. 

Then were celestial harpings heard, not in full sym- 
phony as those by which the spheres are tutored ; 
but, as loudest instruments on earth speak oftentimes, 
muffled ; so to accommodate their sound the better to 
the weak ears of the imperfect-born. And, with the 
noise of those subdued soundings, the Angelet sprang 
forth, fluttering its rudiments of pinions, — but forth- 
with flagged and was recovered into the arms of those 
full- winged angels. And a wonder it was to see how, 
as years went round in heaven — a year in dreams is 
as a day — continually its white shoulders put forth 
buds of wings, but wanting the perfect angelic nutri- 
ment, anon was shorn of its aspiring, and fell fluttering, 



412 THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM. 

— - still caught by angel hands, — forever to put forth 
shoots, and to fall fluttering, because its birth was not 
of the unmixed vigor of heaven. 

And a name was given to the Babe Angel, and it 
was to be called G-e- Urania^ because its production was 
of earth and heaven. 

And it could not taste of death, by reason of its 
adoption into immortal palaces ; but it was to know 
weakness, and reliance, and the shadow of human im- 
becility; and it went with a lame gait; but in its 
goings it exceeded all mortal children in grace and 
swiftness. Then pity first sprang up in angelic 
bosoms ; and yearnings (like the human) touched 
them at the sight of the immortal lame one. 

And with pain did then first those Intuitive Es- 
sences, with pain and strife, to their natures, (not 
grief,) put back their bright intelligences, and reduce 
their ethereal minds, schooling them to degrees and 
slower processes, so to adapt their lessons to the grad- 
ual illumination (as must needs be) of the half-earth- 
born ; and what intuitive notices they could not repel 
(by reason that their nature is, to know all things at 
once), the half-heavenly novice, by the better part of 
its nature, aspired to receive into its understanding ; so 
that Humility and Aspiration went on even-paced in 
the instruction of the glorious Amphibium. 

But, by reason that Mature Humanity is too gross 
to breathe the air of that super-subtile region, its 
portion was, and is, to be a child forever. 

And because j;he human part of it might not press 
into the heart and inwards of the palace of its adoption, 
those fiill-natured angels tended it by turns in the 
purlieus of the palace, where were shady groves and 



THE CHILD ANGEL; A DREAM. 413 

rivulets, like this green earth from which it came ; so 
Love, with Voluntary Humility, waited upon the en- 
tertainment of the new-adopted. 

And myriads of years rolled round, (in dreams Time 
is nothing,) and still it kept, and is to keep, perpetual 
childhood, and is the Tutelar Genius of Childhood 
upon earth, and still goes lame and lovely. 

By the hanks of the river Pison is seen, lone sitting 
by the grave of the terrestrial Adah, whom the angel 
Nadir loved, a Child; but not the same which I saw in 
heaven. A mournful hue overcasts its lineaments ; 
nevertheless a correspondency is between the child by 
the grave, and that celestial orphan, whom I saw 
above ; and the dimness of the grief upon the heav- 
enly, is a shadow or emblem of that which stains the 
beauty of the terrestrial. And this correspondency is 
not to be understood but by dreams. 

And in the archives of heaven I had grace to read, 
how that once the angel Nadir, being exiled from his 
place for mortal passion, upspringing on the wings of 
parental love, (such power had parental love for a mo- 
ment to suspend the else-irrevocable law,) appeared 
for a brief instant in his station, and, depositing a 
wondrous Birth, straightway disappeared, and the pal- 
aces knew him no more. And this charge was the 
selfsame Babe, who goeth lame and lovely, — but 
Adah sleepeth by the river Pison. 



414 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 



CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKAED. 

Dehortations from the use of strong liquors have 
been the favorite topic of sober declaimers in all ages, 
and have been received with abundance of applause by 
water-drinking critics. But with the patient himself, 
the man that is to be cured, unfortunately their sound 
has seldom prevailed. Yet the evil is acknowledged, 
the remedy simple. Abstain. No force can oblige a 
man to raise the glass to his head against his will. 'Tis 
as easy as not to steal, not to tell lies. 

Alas ! the hand to pilfer, and the tongue to bear 
false witness, have no constitutional tendency. These 
are actions indifferent to them. At the first instance 
of the reformed will, they can be brought off without 
a murmur. The itching finger is but a figure in 
speech, and the tongue of the liar can with the same 
natural delight give forth useful truths with which it 
has been accustomed to scatter their pernicious contra- 
ries. But when a man has commenced sot 

O pause, thou sturdy moralist, thou person of stout 
nerves and a strong head, whose liver is happily un- 
touched, and ere thy gorge riseth at the name which I 
have written, first learn what the thing is ; how much 
of compassion, how much of human allowance, thou 
may est virtuously mingle with they disapprobation. 
Trample not on the ruins of a man. Exact not, 
under so terrible a penalty as infamy, a resuscitation 
from a state of death almost as real as that from which 
Lazarus rose not but by a miracle. 

Begin a reformation, and custom will make it easy. 



CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKAED. 415 

But what if the begmning be dreadful, the first steps 
not like dimbing a mountain but going through fire ? 
what if the whole system must undergo a change vio- 
lent as that which we conceive of the mutation of form 
in some insects ? what if a process comparable to flay- 
ing alive be to be gone through ? is the weakness that 
sinks under such struggles to be confounded with the 
pertinacity which clings to other vices, which have 
induced no constitutional necessity, no engagement of 
the whole victim, body and soul ? 

I have known one in that state, when he has tried 
to abstain but for one evening, — though the poisonous 
potion had long ceased to bring back its first enchant- 
ments, though he was sure it w^ould rather deepen 
his gloom than brighten it, — in the violence of the 
struggle, and the necessity he has felt of getting rid of 
the present sensation at any rate, I have known him to 
scream out, to cry aloud, for the anguish and pain of 
the strife within him. 

Why should I hesitate to declare, that the man of 
whom I speak is myself? I have no puling apology to 
make to mankind. I see them all in one way or an- 
other deviating from the pure reason. It is to my own 
nature alone I am accountable for the woe that I have 
brought upon it. 

I believe that there are constitutions, robust heads, 
and iron insides, whom scarce any excesses can hurt ; 
whom brandy, (I have seen them drink it like wine,) 
at all events whom wine, taken in ever so plentiful a 
measure, can do no worse injury to than just to mud- 
dle their faculties, perhaps never very pellucid. On 
them this discourse is wasted. They would but laugh 
at a weak brother, who trying his strength with them, 



416 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 

and coming off foiled from the contest, would fain per- 
suade them that such agonistic exercises are dangerous. 
It is to a very different description of persons I speak. 
It is to the weak, the nervous ; to those who feel the 
want of some artificial aid to raise their spirits in so- 
ciety to what is no more than the ordinary pitch of all 
around them without it. This is the secret of our 
drinking. Such must fly the convivial board in the 
first instance, if they do not mean to sell themselves for 
term of Kfe. 

Twelve years ago I had completed my six-and-twen- 
tieth year. I had lived from the period of leaving 
school to that time pretty much in solitude. My com- 
panions were chiefly books, or at most one or two liv- 
ing ones of my own book-loving and sober stamp. I 
rose early, went to bed betimes, and the faculties which 
God had given me, I have reason to think, did not rust 
in me unused. 

About that time I fell in with some companions of a 
different order. They were men of boisterous spirits, 
sitters up a-nights, disputants, drunken ; yet seemed to 
have something noble about them. We dealt about 
the wit, or what passes for it after midnight, jovially. 
Of the quality called fancy I certainly possessed a 
larger share than my companions. Encouraged by 
their applause, I set up for a professed joker ! I, who 
of all men am least fitted for such an occupation, hav- 
ing, in addition to the greatest difficulty which I ex- 
perience at all times of finding words to express 
my meaning, a natural nervous impediment in my 
speech ! 

Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, 
aspire to any character but that of a wit. When you 



CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 417 

find a tickling relish upon your tongue disposing you 
to that sort of conversation, especially if you find a 
preternatural flow of ideas setting in upon you at the 
sight of a bottle and fresh glasses, avoid giving way to 
it as you would fly your greatest destruction. If you 
cannot crush the power of fancy, or that within you 
which you mistake for such, divert it, give it some 
other play. Write an essay, pen a character or de- 
scription, — but not as I do now, with tears trickling 
down your cheeks. 

To be an object of compassion to friends, of derision 
to foes ; to be suspected by strangers, stared at by 
fools ; to be esteemed dull when you cannot be witty, 
to be applauded for witty when you know that you 
have been dull ; to be called upon for the extemporane- 
ous exercise of that faculty which no premeditation can 
give ; to be spurred on to efforts which end in con- 
tempt ; to be set on to provoke mirth which procures 
the procurer hatred ; to give pleasure and be paid with 
squinting malice; to swallow draughts of life-destroy- 
ing wine which are to be distilled into airy breath to 
tickle vain auditors; to mortgage miserable morrows 
for nights of madness ; to waste whole seas of time 
upon those who pay it back in little inconsiderable 
drops of grudging applause, — are the wages of buf- 
foonery and death. 

Time, which has a sure stroke at dissolving all 
connections which have no solider fastening than 
this liquid cement, more kind to me than my own 
taste or penetration, at length opened my eyes to the 
supposed qualities of my first friends. No trace of 
them is left but in the vices which they introduced, 
and the habits they infixed. In them my friends 

VOL. III. 27 



418 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 

survive still, and exercise ample retribution for any 
supposed infidelity that I may have been guilty of 
towards them. 

My next more immediate companions v^ere and are 
persons of such intrinsic and felt v^orth, that though 
accidentally their acquaintance has proved pernicious 
to me, I do not know that if the thing were to do over 
again, I should have the courage to eschew the mis- 
chief at the price of forfeiting the benefit. I came to 
them reeking from the steams of my late overheated 
notions of companionship ; and the slightest fuel which 
they unconsciously afforded, was sufiicient to feed my 
old fires into a propensity. 

They were no drinkers, but, one from professional 
habits, and another from a custom derived from his 
father, smoked tobacco. The devil could not have 
devised a more subtle trap to retake a backsliding 
penitent. The transition, from gulping down draughts 
of liquid fire to pufiing out innocuous blasts of dry 
smoke, was so like cheating him. But he is too hard 
for us when we hope to commute. He beats us at 
barter ; and when we think to set off" a new failing 
against an old infirmity, 'tis odds but he puts the trick 
upon us of two for one. That (comparatively) white 
devil of tobacco brought with him in the end seven 
worse than himself. 

It were impertinent to carry the reader through all 
the processes by which, from smoking at first with malt 
liquor, I took my degrees through thin wines, through 
stronger wine and water, through small punch, to those 
juggling compositions, which, under the name of mixed 
liquors, slur a great deal of brandy or other poison 
under less and less water continually, until they come 



CONFESSIONS OF A DEUNKARD. 419 

next to none, and so to none at all. But it is hateful 
to disclose the secrets of my Tartarus. 

I should repel my readers, from a mere incapacity of 
believing me, were I to tell them what tobacco has 
been to me, the drudging service which I have paid, 
the slavery which I have vowed to it. How, when I 
have resolved to quit it, a feeling as of ingratitude has 
started up ; how it has put on personal claims and 
made the demands of a friend upon me. How the 
reading of it casually in a book, as where Adams takes 
his whiff in the chimney-corner of some inn in Joseph 
Andrews, or Piscator in the Complete Angler breaks 
his fast upon a morning pipe in that delicate room 
Piseatoribus Sacrum^ has in a moment broken down 
the resistance of weeks. How a pipe was ever in my 
midnight path before me, till the vision forced me to 
realize it, — how then its ascending vapors curled, its 
fragrance lulled, and the thousand delicious minister- 
ings conversant about it, employing every faculty, ex- 
tracted the sense of pain. How from illuminating it 
came to darken, from a quick solace it turned to a 
negative relief, thence to a restlessness and dissatisfac- 
tion, thence to a positive misery. How, even now, 
when the whole secret stands confessed in all its dread- 
ful truth before me, I feel myself linked to it beyond 
the power of revocation. Bone of my bone 

Persons not accustomed to examine the motives of 
their actions, to reckon up the countless nails that rivet 
the chains of habit, or perhaps being bound by none so 
obdurate as those I have confessed to, may recoil from 
this as from an overcharged picture. But what short 
of such a bondage is it, which in spite of protesting 
friends, a weeping wife, and a reprobating world, 



420 CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 

chains down many a poor fellow, of no original in- 
disposition to goodness, to his pipe and his pot? 

I have seen a print after Correggio, in which three 
female figures are ministering to a man who sits fast 
bound at the root of a tree. Sensuality is soothing 
him, Evil Habit is nailing him to a branch, and 
Repugnance, at the same instant of time is applying 
a snake to his side. In his face is feeble delight, the 
recollection of past rather than perception of present 
pleasures, languid enjoyment of evil with utter im- 
becility to good, a Sybaritic effeminacy, a submission 
to bondage, the springs of the will gone down like a 
broken clock, the sin and the suffering coinstanta- 
neous, or the latter forerunning the former, remorse 
preceding action — all this represented in one point of 
time. When I saw this, I admired the wonderful skill 
of the painter. But when I went away, I wept, be- 
cause I thought of my own condition. 

Of that there is no hope that it should ever change. 
The waters have gone over me. But out of the black 
depths, could I be heard, I would cry out to all those 
who have but set a foot in the perilous flood. Could 
the youth, to whom the flaA^or of his first wine is deli- 
cious as the opening scenes of life or the entering upon 
some newly discovered paradise, look into my desola- 
tion, and be made to understand what a dreary thing- 
it is when a man shall feel himself going down a pre- 
cipice with open eyes and a passive will, — to see his 
destruction and have no power to stop it, and yet to 
feel it all the way emanating from himself; to per- 
ceive all goodness emptied out of him, and yet not to 
be able to forget a time when it was otherwise ; to bear 
about the piteous spectacle of his own self-ruins ; — 



CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKARD. 421 

could he see my fevered eye, feverish with last night's 
drinking, and feverishly looking for this night's rep- 
etition of the folly ; could he feel the body of the 
death out of which I cry hourly with feebler and 
feebler outcry to be delivered, — it were enough to 
make him dash the sparkHng beverage to the earth in 
all the pride of its mantling temptation ; to make him 
clasp his teeth, 

and not undo 'em 
To suffer wet damnation to run thro' 'em. 

Yea, but (methinks I hear somebody object) if 
sobriety be that fine thing you would have us to under- 
stand, if the comforts of a cool brain are to be preferred 
to that state of heated excitement which you describe 
and deplore, what hinders in your instance that you do 
not return to those habits from which you would induce 
others never to swerve ? if the blessing be worth pre- 
serving, is it not worth recovering ? 

Recovering ! — O if a wish could transport me back 
to those days of youth, when a draught from the next 
clear spring could slake any heats which summer suns 
and youthful exercise had power to stir up in the blood, 
how gladly would I return to thee, pure element, the 
drink of children, and of childlike holy hermit ! In 
my dreams I can sometimes fancy thy cool refreshment 
purling over my burning tongue. But my waking 
stomach rejects it. That which refreshes innocence 
only makes me sick and faint. 

But is there no middle way betwixt total abstinence 
and the excess which kills you ? — For your sake, 
reader, and that you may never attain to my experi- 
ence, with pain I must utter the dreadful truth, that 
there is none, none that I can find. In my stage of 



422 CONFESSIONS OF A DKUNKARD. 

habit, (I speak not of habits less confirmed — for some 
of them I believe the advice to be most prudential,) in 
the stage which I have reached, to stop short of that 
measure which is sufficient to draw on torpor and sleep, 
the benumbing apoplectic sleep of the drunkard, is to 
have taken none at all. The pain of the self-denial is 
all one. And what that is, I had rather the reader 
should believe on my credit, than know from his own 
trial. He will come to know it, whenever he shall 
arrive in that state, in which, paradoxical as it may ap- 
pear, reason shall only visit him through intoxication; 
for it is a fearfal truth, that the intellectual faculties by 
repeated acts of intemperance may be driven from their 
orderly sphere of action, their clear daylight ministries, 
until they shall be brought at last to depend, for the 
faint manifestation of their departing energies, upon the 
returning periods of the fatal madness to which they 
owe their devastation. The drinking man is never less 
himself than during his sober intervals. Evil is so far 
his good.* 

Behold me then, in the robust period of life, reduced 
to imbecility and decay. Hear me count my gains, 
and the profits which I have derived from the mid- 
night cup. 

Twelve years ago, I was possessed of a healthy frame 
of mind and body. I was never strong, but I think my 
constitution (for a weak one) was as happily exempt 
from the tendency to any malady as it was possible to 

* When poor M painted his last picture, with a pencil in one trem- 
bling hand, and a glass of brandy and water in the other, his fingers owed 
the comparative steadiness with which they were enabled to go through 
their task in an imperfect manner, to a temporary firmness derived from a 
repetition of practices, the general effect of which had shaken both thera 
Hnd him so terribly. 



CONFESSIONS OF A DRUNKAED. 423 

be. I scarce knew what it was to ail anything. Now, 
except when I am losing myself in a sea of drink, I am 
never free from those uneasy sensations in head and 
stomach, which are so much worse to bear than any 
definite pains or aches. 

At that time I was seldom in bed after six in the 
morning, summer and w^inter. I awoke refreshed, and 
seldom without some merry thoughts in my head, or 
some piece of a song to welcome the new-born day. 
Now, the first feeling which besets me, after stretching 
out the hours of recumbence to their last possible ex- 
tent, is a forecast of the wearisome day that lies before 
me, with a secret wish that I could have lain on still, 
or never awaked. 

Life itself, mv wakino; life, has much of the con- 
fusion, the trouble, and obscure perplexity, of an ill 
dream. In the daytime I stumble upon dark moun- 
tains. 

Business, which, though never very particularly 
adapted to my nature, yet as something of necessity 
to be gone through, and therefore best undertaken with 
cheerfulness, I used to enter upon with some degree of 
alacrity, now wearies, affrights, perplexes me. I fancy 
all sorts of discouragements, and am ready to give up 
an occupation which gives me bread, from a harassing 
conceit of incapacity. The slightest commission given 
me by a friend, or any small duty which I have to per- 
form for myself, as giving orders to a tradesman, &c., 
haunts me as a labor impossible to be got through. So 
much the springs of action are broken. 

The same cowardice attends me in all my inter- 
course with mankind. I dare not promise that a 
friend's honor, or his cause, would be safe in my keep- 



424 CONFESSIONS OF A DKUNKARD. 

ing, if I were put to the expense of any manly resolu- 
tion in defending it. So much the springs of moral 
action are deadened within me. 

My favorite occupations in times past, now cease 
to entertain. I can do nothing readily. Application 
for ever so short a time kills me. This poor abstract 
of my condition was penned at long intervals, with 
scarcely any attempt at connection of thought, which 
is ROW difficult to me. 

The noble passages which formerly delighted me in 
history or poetic fiction, now only draw a few weak 
tears, allied to dotage. My broken and dispirited 
nature seems to sink before anything great and admi- 
rable. 

I perpetually catch myself in tears, for any cause, 
or none. It is inexpressible how much this infirmity 
adds to a sense of shame, and a general feeling of de- 
terioration. 

These are some of the instances, concerning which 
I can say with truth, that it was not always so with 
me. 

Shall I lift up the veil of my weakness any farther ? 
or is this disclosure sufficient? 

I am a poor nameless egotist, who have no vanity to 
consult by these Confessions. I know not whether I 
shall be laughed at, or heard seriously. Such as they 
are, I commend them to the reader's attention, if he 
find his own case any way touched. I have told him 
what I am come to. Let him stop in time. 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 425 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 
I. 

THAT A BULLY IS ALWAYS A COWARD. 

This axiom contains a principle of compensation, 
which disposes us to admit the truth of it. But there 
is no safe trusting to dictionaries and definitions. We 
should more willingly fall in with this popular lan- 
guage, if we did not find brutality sometimes awk- 
wardly coupled with valor in the same vocabulary. 
The comic writers, with their poetical justice, have 
contributed not a little to mislead us upon this point. 
To see a hectoring fellow exposed and beaten upon the 
stage, has something in it wonderfully diverting. Some 
people's share of animal spirits is notoriously low and 
defective. It has not strength to raise a vapor, or 
furnish out the wind of a tolerable bluster. These 
love to be told that huffing is no part of valor. The 
truest courage with them is that which is the least 
noisy and obtrusive. But confront one of these silent 
heroes with the swaggerer of real life, and his con- 
fidence in the theory quickly vanishes. Pretensions do 
not uniformly bespeak non-performance. A modest in- 
offensive deportment does not necessarily imply valor ; 
neither does the absence of it justify us in denying that 
quality. Hickman wanted modesty, — we do not mean 
him of Clarissa, — but who ever doubted his courage ? 
Even the poets — upon whom this equitable distribu- 
tion of qualities should be most binding — have thought 
it agreeable to nature to depart from the rule upon oc- 
casion. Harapha, in the " Agonistes," is indeed a bully 



426 POPULAK FALLACIES. 

upon tlie received notions. Milton has made him at 
once a blusterer, a giant, and a dastard. But Alman- 
zor, in Drjden, talks of driving armies singly before 
him — and does it. Tom Brown had a shrewder in- 
sight into this kind of character than either of his pre- 
decessors. He divides the palm more equably, and 
allows his hero a sort of dimidiate preeminence : — 
" Bully Dawson kicked by half the town, and half 
the town kicked by Bully Dawson." This was true 

distributive justice. 

II. 

THAT ILL-GOTTEN GAIN NEVER PROSPERS. 

The weakest part of mankind have this saying com- 
monest in their mouth. It is the trite consolation ad- 
ministered to the easy dupe, when he has been tricked 
out of his money or estate, that the acquisition of it will 
do the owner no good. But the rogues of this world — 
the prudenter part of them, at least — know better ; 
and if the observation had been as true as it is old, 
would not have failed by this time to have discovered 
it. They have pretty sharp distinctions of the fluctuat- 
ing and the permanent. " Lightly come, lightly go," 
is a proverb, which they can very well afford to leave, 
when they leave little else, to the losers. They do not 
always find manors, got by rapine or chicanery, in- 
sensibly to melt away, as the poets will have it ; or 
that all gold glides, like thawing snow, from the thief's 
hand that grasps it. Church land, alienated to lay 
uses, was formerly denounced to have this slippery 
quality. But some portions of it somehow always 
stuck so fast, that the denunciators have been fain to 
postpone the prophecy of refrmdment to a late pos- 
terity. 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 427 

III. 
THAT A MAN MUST NOT LAUGH AT HIS OWN JEST. 

The severest exaction surely ever invented upon the 
self-denial of poor human nature ! This is to expect a 
gentleman to give a treat without partaking of it ; to 
sit esurient at his own table, and commend the flavor 
of his venison upon the absurd strength of his never 
touching it himself. On the contrary, we love to see a 
wag taste his own joke to his party ; to watch a quirk 
or a merry conceit flickering upon the lips some seconds 
before the tongue is delivered of it. If it be good, 
fresh, and racy — begotten of the occasion ; if he that 
utters it never thought it before, he is naturally the 
first to be tickled with it ; and any suppression of such 
complacence we hold to be churlish and insulting. 
What does it seem to imply, but that your company is 
weak or foolish enough to be moved by an image or a 
fancy, that shall stir you not at all, or but faintly ? 
This is exactly the humor of the fine gentleman in 
Mandeville, who, while he dazzles his guests with the 
display of some costly toy, affects himself to " see 
nothing considerable in it." 

IV. 

THAT SUCH A ONE SHOWS HIS BREEDING. — THAT IT IS EASY 
TO PERCEIVE HE IS NO GENTLEMAN. 

A SPEECH from the poorest sort of people, which 
always indicates that the party vituperated is a gentle- 
man. The very fact which they ieny is that which 
galls and exasperates them to use this language. The 
forbearance with which it is usually received, is a proof 
what interpretation the bystander sets upon it. Of a 



428 POPULAE FALLACIES. 

kin to this, and still less politic, are the phrases with 
which, in their street rhetoric, they ply one another 
more grossly : — ■ He is a poor creature. — He has not a 

rag to cover , ^c. ; thought his last, we confess, is 

more frequently applied by females to females. They 
do not perceive that the satire glances upon themselves. 
A poor man, of all things in the world, should not up- 
braid an antagonist with poverty. Are there no other 
topics — as, to tell him his father was hanged, — his 

sister, &c. , without exposing a secret, which 

should be kept snug between them ; and doing an 
affront to the order to which they have the honor 
equally to belong? All this while they do not see 
how the wealthier man stands by and laughs in his 
sleeve at both. 

V. 

THAT THE POOR COPY THE VICES OF THE RICH. 

A SMOOTH text to the letter; and, preached from 
the pulpit, is sure of a docile audience from the pews 
lined with satin. It is twice sitting upon velvet to a 
foolish squire to be told, that he — and not perverse 
nature, as the homilies would make us imagine, is the 
true cause of all the irregularities in his parish. This 
is striking at the root of free-will indeed, and denying 
the originality of sin in any sense. But men are not 
such implicit sheep as this comes to. If the abstinence 
from evil on the part of the upper classes is to derive 
itself from no higher principle than the apprehension of 
setting ill patterns to the lower, we beg leave to dis- 
charge them from all squeamishness on that score ; they 
may even take their fill of pleasures, where they can 
find them. The Genius of Poverty, hampered and 



POPULAR FALLACIES, 429 

straitened as it is, is not so barren of invention, but it 
can trade upon the staple of its own vice, without 
drawing upon their capital. The poor are not quite 
such servile imitators as they take them for. Some of 
them are very clever artists in their way. Here and 
there we find an original. Who taught the poor to 
steal, to pilfer? They did not go to the great for 
schoolmasters in these faculties surely. It is well if in 
some vices they allow us to be — no copyists. In no 
other sense is it true that the poor copy them, than as 
servants may be said to take after their masters and 
mistresses, when they succeed to their reversionary cold 
meats. If the master, from indisposition or some other 
cause, neglect his food, the servant dines notwithstand- 
ing. 

" O, but (some will say) the force of example is 
great." We knew a lady who was so scrupulous on 
this head, that she would put up with the calls of the 
most impertinent visitor, rather than let her servant say 
she was not at home, for fear of teaching her maid to 
tell an untruth ; and this in the very face of the fact, 
which she knew well enough, that the wench was one 
of the greatest liars upon the earth without teaching ; 
so much so, that her mistress possibly never heard two 
words of consecutive truth from her in her life. But 
nature must go for nothing : example must be every- 
thing. This liar in grain, who never opened her 
mouth without a lie, must be guarded against a remote 
inference, which she (pretty casuist !) might possibly 
draw from a form of words — literally false, but essen- 
tially deceiving no one — that under some circum- 
stances a fib might not be so exceedingly sinful — a 
fiction, too, not at all in her own way, or one that she 



430 POPULAR FALLACIES. 

could be suspected of adopting, for few servant-wenches 
care to be denied to visitors. 

This word example reminds us of another fine word 
which is in use upon these occasions — encouragement. 
" People in our sphere must not be thought to give 
encouragement to such proceedings." To such a fran- 
tic height is this principle capable of being carried, that 
we have known individuals who have thought it within 
the scope of their influence to sanction despair, and give 
eclat to — suicide. A domestic in the family of a 
county member lately deceased, from love, or some 
unknown cause, cut his throat, but not successfully. 
The poor fellow was otherwise much loved and re- 
spected ; and great interest was used in his behalf, 
upon his recovery, that he might be permitted to retain 
his place ; his word being first pledged, not without 
some substantial sponsors to promise for him, that the 
like should never happen again. His master was in- 
clinable to keep him, but his mistress thought other- 
wise ; and John in the end was dismissed, her ladyship 
declaring that she " could not think of encouraging 
any such doings in the county." 



VI. 
THAT ENOUGH IS AS GOOD AS A FEAST. 

Not a man, woman, or child, in ten miles round 
Guildhall, who really believes this saying. The in- 
ventor of it did not believe it himself. It was made in 
revenge by somebody, who was disappointed of a regale. 
It is a vile cold-scrag-of-inutton sophism ; a lie palmed 
upon the palate, which knows better things. If nothing 
else could be said for a feast, this is sufficient, that from 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 431 

the superflux there is usually something left for the 
next day. Morally interpreted, it belongs to a class of 
proverbs which have a tendency to make us undervalue 
money. Of this cast are those notable observations, 
that money is not health ; riches cannot purchase 
everything : the metaphor which makes gold to be 
mere muck, with the morality which traces fine cloth- 
ing to the sheep's back, and denounces pearl as the 
unhandsome excretion of an oyster. Hence, too, the 
phrase which imputes dirt to acres — a sophistry so 
barefaced, that even the literal sense of it is true only 
in a wet season. This, and abundance of similar sage 
saws assuming to inculcate content., we verily believe to 
have been the invention of some cunning borrower, 
who had designs upon the purse of his wealthier neigh- 
bor, which he could only hope to carry by force of 
these verbal jugglings. Translate any one of these 
sayings out of the artful metonymy which envelopes 
it, and the trick is apparent. Goodly legs and shoul- 
ders of mutton, exhilarating cordials, books, pictures, 
the opportunities of seeing foreign countries, independ- 
ence, heart's ease, a man's own time to himself, are 
not muck — however we may be pleased to scandalize 
with that appellation the faithful metal that provides 
them for us. 

VII. 

OF TWO DISPUTANTS THE WARMEST IS GENERALLY IN THE 

WRONG. 

Our experience would lead us to quite an opposite 
conclusion. Temper, indeed, is no test of truth ; but 
warmth and earnestness are a proof at least of a man's 
own conviction of the rectitude of that which he main- 



432 POPULAR FALLACIES. 

tains. Coolness is as often the result of an unprincipled 
indifference to trutli or falsehood, as of a sober confi- 
dence in a man's own side in a dispute. Nothing is 
more insulting sometimes than the appearance of this 
philosophic temper. There is little Titubus, the stam- 
mering law-stationer in Lincoln's Inn, — we have sel- 
dom known this shrewd little fellow engaged in an 
argument where we were not convinced he had the 
best of it, if his tongue would but fairly have seconded 
him. When he has been spluttering excellent broken 
sense for an hour together, writhing and laboring to be 
delivered of the point of dispute, — the very gist of the 
controversy knocking at his teeth, which like some 
obstinate iron-grating still obstructed its deliverance, — 
his puny frame convulsed, and face reddening all over 
at an unfairness in the logic which he wanted articula- 
tion to expose, it has moved our gall to see a smooth 
portly fellow of an adversary, that cared not a button 
for the merits of the question, by merely laying his 
hand upon the head of the stationer, and desiring him 
to be calm^ (your tall disputants have always the ad- 
vantage.) with a provoking sneer carry the argument 
clean from him in the opinion of all the bystanders, 
who have gone away clearly convinced that Titubus 
must have been in the wrong, because he was in a pas- 
sion ; and that Mr. , meaning his opponent, is one 

of the fairest and at the same time one of the most dis- 
passionate arguers breathing. 



POPULAK FALLACIES. 433 



VIII. 

THAT VERBAL ALLUSIONS ARE NOT WIT, BECAUSE THEY 
WILL NOT BEAR A TRANSLATION. 

The same might be said of the wittiest local allu- 
sions. A custom is sometimes as difficult to explain 
to a foreigner as a pun. What would become of a 
great part of the wit of the last age if it were tried 
by this test ? How would certain topics, as alder- 
inanity, cuckoldry, have sounded to a Terentian audi- 
tory, though Terence himself had been alive to translate 
them ? Senator urbanus with Ourruca to boot for a 
synonyme, would but faintly have done the business. 
Words, involving notions, are hard enough to render ; 
it is too much to expect us to translate a sound, and 
give an elegant version to a jingle. The Virgilian 
harmony is not translatable, but by substituting har- 
monious sounds in another lano-uao-e for it. To Latin- 
ize a pun, we must seek a pun in Latin, that will 
answer to it ; as, to give an idea of the double endings 
in Hudibras, we must have recourse to a similar prac- 
tice in the old monkish doggerel. Dennis, the fiercest 
oppugner of puns in ancient or modern times, professes 
himself highly tickled with the " a stick," chiming to 
" ecclesiastic." Yet what is this but a species of pun, a 
verbal consonance ? 

IX. 

THAT THE WORST PUNS ARE THE BEST. 

If by worst be only meant the most far-fetched and 
startling, we agree to it. A pun is not bound by the 
laws which limit nicer w^it. It is a pistol let off at 
the ear ; not a feather to tickle the intellect. It is an 

VOL. III. 28 



434 POPULAR FALLACIES. 

antic which does not stand upon manners, but comes 
bounding into the presence, and does not show the less 
comic for being dragged in sometimes by the head and 
shoulders. What though it limp a little, or prove de- 
fective in one leg? — all the better. A pun may easily 
be too curious and artificial. Who has not at one time 
or other been at a party of professors, (himself perhaps 
an old offender in that line,) where, after ringing a 
round of the most ingenious conceits, every man con- 
tributing his shot, and some there the most expert 
shooters of the day ; after making a poor word run the 
gauntlet till it is ready to drop ; after hunting and 
winding it through all the possible ambages of similar 
sounds ; after squeezing, and hauling, and tugging at it, 
till the very milk of it will not 3deld a drop further, — 
suddenly some obscure, unthought-of fellow in a corner, 
who was never 'prentice to the trade, whom the com- 
pany for very pity passed over, as we do by a known 
poor man when a money-subscription is going round, 
no one calling upon him for his quota, — has all at once 
come out with something so whimsical, yet so pertinent ; 
so brazen in its pretensions, yet so impossible to be de- 
nied ; so exquisitely good, and so deplorably bad, at the 
same time, — that it has proved a Robin Hood's shot ; 
anything ulterior to that is despaired of; and the party 
breaks up, unanimously voting it to be the very worst 
(that is, best) pun of the evening. This species of wit 
is the better for not being perfect in all its parts. What 
it gains in completeness, it loses in naturalness. The 
more exactly it satisfies the critical, the less hold it has 
upon some other faculties. The puns which are most 
entertaining are those which will least bear an analysis. 
Of this kind is the following, recorded with a sort of 
stigma, in one of Swift's Miscellanies. 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 435 

An Oxford scholar, meeting a porter who was carry- 
ino; a hare through the streets, accosts him with this ex- 
traordinary question : " Prithee, friend, is that thy own 
hare, or a wig ? " 

There is no excusing this, and no resisting it. A 
man might bku' ten sides of paper in attempting a de- 
fence of it against a critic who shoukl be laughter-proof. 
The quibble in itself is not considerable. It is only a 
new turn given by a little false pronunciation, to a very 
common, though not very courteous inquiry. Put by 
one gentleman to another at a dinner-party, it would 
have been vapid ; to the mistress of the house, it would 
have shown much less wit than rudeness. We must 
take in the totality of time, place, and person ; the pert 
look of the inquiring scholar, the desponding looks of 
the puzzled porter ; the one stopping at leisure, the 
other hurrying on with his burden ; the innocent 
though rather abrupt tendency of the first member of 
the question, with the utter and inextricable irrelevancy 
of the second ; the place — a public street not favorable 
to frivolous investigations ; the affrontive quality of the 
primitive inquiry (the common question) invidiously 
transferred to the derivative (the new turn given to it) 
in the implied satire ; namely, that few of that tribe 
are expected to eat of the good things which they 
carry, they being in most countries considered rather 
as the temporary trustees than owners of such dainties, 
— which the fellow was beginning to understand ; but 
then the wig again comes in, and he can make nothing 
of it ; all put together constitute a picture ; Hogarth 
could have made it intelligible on canvas. 

Yet nine out of ten critics will pronounce this a very 
bad pun, because of the defectiveness in the concluding 



436 POPULAR FALLACIES. 

member, which is its very beauty, and constitutes the 
surprise. The same person shall cry up for admirable 
the cold quibble from Virgil about the broken Cre- 
mona ; * because it is made out in all its parts, and 
leaves nothing to the imagination. We venture to call 
it cold ; because, of thousands who have admired it, it 
would be difficult to find one who has heartily chuckled 
at it. As appealing to the judgment merely, (setting 
the risible faculty aside,) we must pronounce it a mon- 
ument of curious felicity. But as some stories are said 
to be too good to be true, it may with equal truth be 
asserted of this bi verbal allusion, that it is too good to 
be natural. One cannot help suspecting that the inci- 
dent was invented to fit the line. It would have been 
better had it been less perfect. Like some Virgilian 
hemistichs, it has sufiered by filling up. The nimium 
Vieina was enough in conscience ; the Cremonoe after- 
wards loads it. It is in fact a double pun ; and we 
have always observed that a superfoetation in this sort 
of wit is dangerous. When a man has said a good 
thing, it is seldom politic to follow it up. We do not 
care to be cheated a second time ; or, perhaps, the 
mind of man (with reverence be it spoken) is not capa- 
cious enough to lodge two puns at a time. The im- 
pression, to be forcible, must be simultaneous and un- 
divided. 

X. 

THAT HANDSOME IS THAT HANDSOME DOES. 

Those who use this proverb can never have seen 
Mrs. Conrady. 

The soul, if we may believe Plotinus, is a ray from 

* Swift. 



POPULAR FALLACIES, 437 

the celestial beauty. As she partakes more or less of 
this heavenly light, she informs, with corresponding 
characters, the fleshly tenement which she chooses, and 
frames to herself a suitable mansion. 

All which only proves that the soul of Mrs. Con- 
rady, in her preexistent state, was no great judge of 
architecture. 

To the same effect, in a Hymn in honor of Beauty, 
divine Spenser platonizing^ sings : — 

Every spirit as it is more pure, 



And hath in it the more of heavenly light, 
So it the fairer body doth procure 
To habit in, and it more fairly dight 
With cheerful grace and amiable sight. 
For of the soul the body form doth take: 
For soul is form and doth the body make. 

But Spenser it is clear never saw Mrs. Conrady. 

These poets, we find, are no safe guides in philoso- 
phy ; for here, in his very next stanza but one, is a 
saving clause, which throws us all out again, and leaves 
us as much to seek as ever : — 

Yet oft it falls, that many a gentle mind 
Dwells in deformed tabernacle drown'd, 
Either by chance, against the coui-se of kind. 
Or through unaptness in the substance found. 
Which it assumed of some stubborn ground, 
That will not yield unto her form's direction. 
But is performed with some foul imperfection. 

From which it would follow, that Spenser had seen 
somebody like Mrs. Conrady. 

The spirit of this good lady — her previous anima — 
must have stumbled upon one of these untoward taber- 
nacles which he speaks of. A more rebellious com- 
modity of clay for a ground, as the poet calls it, no 
gentle mind — and sure her's is one of the gentlest — ■ 
3ver had to deal with. 



438 POPULAE FALLACIES. 

Pondering upon her inexplicable visage, — inexpli- 
cable, we mean, but by this modification of the theory 

— we have come to a conclusion that, if one must be 
plain, it is better to be plain all over, than amidst a 
tolerable residue of features, to hang out one that shall 
be exceptionable. No one can say of Mrs. Conrady's 
countenance that it would be better if she had but a 
nose. It is impossible to pull her to pieces in this 
manner. We have seen the most tnalicious beauties 
of her own sex baffled in the attempt at a selection. 
The tout-ensemble defies particularizing. It is too com- 
plete — too consistent, as we may say — to admit of 
these invidious reservations. It is not as if some 
Apelles had picked out here a lip — and there a chin 

— out of the collected ugliness of Greece, to frame a 
model by. It is a symmetrical whole. We challenge 
the minutest connoisseur to cavil at any part or parcel 
of the countenance in question ; to say that this, or 
that, is improperly placed. We are convinced that 
true ugliness, no less tha.n is affirmed of true beauty, is 
the result of harmony. Like that too it reigns without 
a competitor. No one ever saw Mrs. Conrady, without 
pronouncing her to be the plainest woman that he ever 
met with in the course of his life. The first time that 
you are indulged with a sight of her face, is an era in 
your existence ever after. You are glad to have seen 
it — like Stonehenge. No one can pretend to forget it. 
No one ever apologized to her for meeting her in the 
street on such a day and not knowing her ; the pretext 
would be too bare. Nobody can mistake her for 
another. Nobody can say of her, " I think I have 
seen that face somewhere, but I cannot call to mind 
where." You must remember that in such a parlor it 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 439 

first struck you — like a bust. You wondered where 
the owner of the house had picked it up. You won- 
dered more when it began to move its lips — so mildly 
too ! No one ever thought of asking her to sit for her 
picture. Lockets are for remembrance ; and it would 
be clearly superfluous to hang an image at your heart, 
which, once seen, can never be out of it. It is not a 
mean face either ; its entire originality precludes that. 
Neither is it of that order of plain faces which improve 
upon acquaintance. Some very good but ordinary 
people, by an unwearied perseverance in good offices, 
put a cheat upon our eyes ; juggle our senses out of 
their natural impressions ; and set us upon discovering 
good indications in a countenance, which at first sight 
promised nothing less. We detect gentleness, which 
had escaped us, lurking about an underlip. But when 
Mrs. Conrady has done you a service, her face remains 
the same ; when she has done you a thousand, and you 
know that she is ready to double the number, still it is 
that individual face. Neither can you say of it, that it 
would be a good face if it were not marked by the 
small-pox, — a compliment which is always more ad- 
missive than excusatory, — for either Mrs. Conrady 
never had the small-pox, or, as we say, took it kindly. 
No, it stands upon its own merits fairly. There it is. 
It is her mark, her token ; that which she is known by. 



XI. 

THAT WE MUST NOT LOOK A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH. 

Nor a lady's age in the parish register. We hope 
we have more delicacy than to do either ; but some 
faces spare us the trouble of these dental inquiries. 



440 POPULAR FALLACIES. 

And what if the beast, which my friend would force 
upon my acceptance, prove, upon the face of it, a sorry 
Rosinante, a lean, ill-favored jade, whom no gentleman 
could think of setting up in his stables ? Must I, 
rather than not be obliged to my friend, make her a 
companion to Eclipse or Lightfoot ? A horse-giver, no 
more than a horse-seller, has a right to palm his 
spavined article upon us for good ware. An equivalent 
is expected in either case ; and, with my own good 
will, I would no more be cheated out of my thanks 
than out of my money. Some people have a knack of 
putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you 
to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing. 
Our friend Mitis carries this humor of never refusing a 
present to the very point of absurdity - — if it were pos- 
sible to couple the ridiculous with so much mistaken 
delicacy, and real good-nature. Not an apartment in 
his fine house (and he has a true taste in household 
decorations), but is stuffed up with some preposterous 
print or mirror, — the worst adapted to his panels that 
may be, — the presents of his friends that know his 
weakness ; while his noble Vandykes are displaced, 
to make room for a set of daubs, the work of some 
wretched artist of his acquaintance, who, having had 
them returned upon his hands for bad likenesses, finds 
his account in bestowing them here gratis. The good 
creature has not the heart to mortify the painter at the 
expense of an honest refusal. It is pleasant (if it did 
not vex one at the same time) to see him sitting in 
his dining parlor ; surrounded with obscure aunts and 
cousins to God knows whom, while the true Lady 
Marys and Lady Bettys of his own honorable family, 
in favor to these adopted frights, are consigned to the 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 441 

staircase and the lumber-room. In like manner his 
^goodly shelves are one by one stripped of his favorite 
old authors, to give place to a collection of presentation 
copies — the flour and bran of modern poetry. A pre- 
sentation copy, reader, — if haply you are yet innocent 
of such favors, — is a copy of a book which does not 
sell, sent you by the author, with his foolish autograph 
at the beginning of it ; for which, if a stranger, he only 
demands your friendship ; if a brother author, he ex- 
pects from you a book of yours, which does sell, in 
return. We can speak to experience, having by us a 
tolerable assortment of these gift-horses. Not to ride a 
metaphor to death — we are willing to acknowledge, 
that in some gifts there is sense. A duplicate out of a 
friend's library (where he has more than one copy of a 
rare author) is intelligible. There are favors short of 
the pecuniary — a thing not fit to be hinted at among 
gentlemen — which confer as much grace upon the ac- 
ceptor as the offerer; the kind, we confess, which is 
most to our palate, is of those little conciliatory mis- 
sives, Avhich for their vehicle generally choose a ham- 
per, — little odd presents of game, fruit, perhaps wine, 
— though it is essential to the delicacy of the latter that 
it be home-made. We love to have our friend in the 
country sitting thus at our table by proxy ; to appre- 
hend his presence (though a hundred miles may be 
between us) by a turkey, whose goodly aspect reflects 
to us his " plump corpusculum ; " to taste him in 
grouse or woodcock ; to feel him gliding down in the 
toast peculiar to the latter ; to concorporate him in a 
slice of Canterbury brawn. This is indeed to have 
him within ourselves ; to know him intimately ; such 
participation is methinks unitive, as the old theologians 



442 POPULAE FALLACIES. 

phrase it. For these considerations we should be sorry 
if certain restrictive regulations, which are thought to 
bear hard upon the peasantry of this country, were 
entirely done away with. A hare, as the law now 
stands, makes many friends. Caius conciliates Titius 
(knowing his gouf) with a leash of partridges. Titius 
(suspecting his partiality for them) passes them to 
Lucius ; who in his turn, preferring his friend's relish 
to his own, makes them over to Marcius ; till in their 
ever-widening progress, and round of unconscious cir- 
cummigration, they distribute the seeds of harmony 
over half a parish. We are well disposed to this kind 
of sensible remembrances ; and are the less apt to be 
taken by those little airy tokens — impalpable to the 
palate — which, under the names of rings, lockets, 
keepsakes, amuse some people's fancy mightily. We 
could never away with these indigestible trifles. They 
are the very kickshaws and foppery of friendship. 



XII. 
THAT HOME IS HOME, THOUGH IT IS NEVER SO HOMELY. 

Homes there are, we are sure, that are no homes ; 
the home of the very poor man, and another which 
we shall speak to presently. Crowded places of cheap 
entertainment, and the benches of ale-houses, if they 
could speak, might bear mournful testimony to the 
first. To them the very poor man resorts for an image 
of the home, which he cannot find at home. For a 
starved grate, and a scanty firing, that is not enough 
to keep alive the natural heat in the fingers of so many 
shivering children -with their mother, he finds in the 
depths of winter always a blazing hearth, and a hob 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 443 

to warm his pittance of beer by. Instead of the clam- 
ors of a wife, made gaunt by famishing, he meets with 
a cheerful attendance beyond the merits of the trifle 
which he can aiford to spend. He has companions 
which his home denies him, for the very poor man has 
no visitors. He can look into the goings on of the 
world, and speak a little to politics. At home there 
are no politics stirring, but the domestic. All interests, 
real or imaginary, all topics that should expand the 
mind of man, and connect him to a sympathy with 
general existence, are crushed in the absorbing consid- 
eration of food to be obtained for the family. Beyond 
the price of bread, news is senseless and impertinent. 
At home there is no larder. Here there is at least a 
show of plenty ; and while he cooks his lean scrap of 
butcher's meat before the common bars, or munches 
his humbler cold viands, his relishing bread and cheese 
with an onion, in a corner, w^here no one reflects upon 
his poverty, he has a sight of the substantial joint pro- 
viding for the landlord and his family. He takes an 
interest in the dressing of it ; and while he assists in 
removing the trivet from the fire, he feels that there 
is such a thing as beef and cabbage, which he was be- 
ginning to forget at home. All this while he deserts 
his wife and children. But what wife, and what chil- 
dren ? Prosperous men, who object to this desertion, 
image to themselves some clean contented family like 
that which they go home to. But look at the counte- 
nance of the poor wives who follow and persecute their 
goodman to the door of the public-house, which he is 
about to enter, when something like shame would re- 
strain him, if stronger misery did not induce him to 
oass the threshold. That face, ground by want, in 



444 POPULAR FALLACIES. 

which every cheerjpiil, every conversable lineament has 
been long effaced by misery, — is that a face to stay 
at home with ? is it more a woman, or a wild cat ? 
alas ! it is the face of the wife of his youth, that once 
smiled upon him. It can smile no longer. What 
comforts can it share ? what burdens can it lighten ? 
Oh, 'tis a. fine thing to talk of the humble meal shared 
together ! But what if there be no bread in the cup- 
board ? The innocent prattle of his children takes 
out the sting of a man's poverty. But the children of 
the very poor do not prattle. It is none of the least 
frightful features in that condition, that there is no 
childishness in its dwellings. Poor people, said a sen- 
sible old nurse to us once, do not bring up their chil- 
dren ; they drag them up. The little careless darling 
of the wealthier nursery, in their hovel is transformed 
betimes into a premature reflecting person. No one 
has time to dandle it, no one thinks it worth while to 
coax it, to soothe it, to toss it up and down, to humor 
it. There is none to kiss away its tears. If it cries, 
it can only be beaten. It has been prettily said, that 
"a babe is fed with milk and praise." But the ali- 
ment of this poor babe was thin, unnourishing ; the 
return to its little baby-tricks, and efibrts to engage 
attention, bitter ceaseless objurgation. It never had 
a toy, or knew what a coral meant. It grew up with- 
out the lullaby of nurses ; it was a stranger to the pa- 
tient fondle, the hushing caress, the attracting novelty, 
the costlier plaything, or the cheaper off-hand contri- 
vance to divert the child ; the prattled nonsense (best 
sense to it), the wise impertinences, the wholesome 
lies, the apt story interposed, that puts a stop to present 
sufferings, and awakens the passions of young wonder. 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 445 

It was never sung to, — no one ever told to it a tale 
of the nurserj. It was dragged up, to live or to die 
as it happened. It had no young dreams. It broke 
at once into the iron realities of life, A child exists 
not for the very poor as any object of dalliance ; it is 
only another mouth to be fed, a pair of little hands to 
be betimes inured to labor. It is the rival, till it can be 
the cooperator for food with the parent. It is never his 
mirth, his diversion, his solace ; it never makes him 
young again, with recalling his young times. The 
children of the very poor have no young times. It 
makes the very heart to bleed to overhear the casual 
street-talk between a poor woman and her little girl, 
a woman of the better sort of poor, in a condition 
rather above the squalid beings which we have been 
contemplating. It is not of toys, of nursery books, 
of summer holidays (fitting that age) ; of the promised 
sight, or play ; of praised sufficiency at school. It is 
of mangling and clear-starching, of the price of coals, 
or of potatoes. The questions of the child, that should 
be the very outpourings of curiosity in idleness, are 
marked with forecast and melancholy providence. It 
has come to be a woman — before it was a child. It 
has learned to go to market ; it chaffers, it haggles, it 
envies, it murmurs ; it is knowing, acute, sharpened ; 
it never prattles. Had we not reason to say, that the 
home of the very poor is no home ? 

There is yet another home, which we are constrained 
to deny to be one. It has a larder, which the home 
of the poor man wants ; its fireside conveniences, of 
which the poor dream not. But with all this, it is no 
home. It is — the house of a man that is infested 
with many visitors. May we be branded for the veri- 



446 POPULAR FALLACIES. 

est cliurl, if we deny our heart to tlie many noble- 
hearted friends that at times exchange their dwelKng 
for our poor roof! It is not of guests that we com- 
plain, but of endless, purposeless visitants ; droppers 
in, as they are called. We sometimes wonder from 
what sky they fall. It is the very error of the posi- 
tion of our lodging ; its horoscopy was ill-calculated, 
being just situate in a medium — a plaguy suburban 
midspace — fitted to catch idlers from town or country. 
We are older than we were, and age is easily put out 
of its way. We have fewer sands in our glass to 
reckon upon, and we cannot brook to see them drop in 
endlessly succeeding impertinences. At our time of 
life, to be alone sometimes is as needful as sleep. It 
is the refreshing sleep of the day. The growing in- 
firmities of age manifest themselves in nothing more 
strongly than in an inveterate dislike of interruption. 
The thing which we are doing, we wish to be permitted 
to do. We have neither much knowledge nor devices ; 
but there are fewer in the place to which we hasten. 
We are not willingly put out of our way, even at a 
game of ninepins. While youth was, we had vast re- 
versions in time future; we are reduced to a present 
pittance, and obliged to economize in that article. We 
bleed away our moments now as hardly as our ducats. 
We cannot bear to have our thin wardrobe eaten and 
fretted into by moths. We are willing to barter our 
good time with a friend, who gives us in exchange his 
own. Herein is the distinction between the genuine 
guest and the visitant. This latter takes your good 
time, and gives you his bad in exchange. The guest is 
domestic to you as your good cat, or household bird ; 
the visitant is your fly, tliat flaps in at your window, 



POPULAR FALLACIES, 447 

and out again, leaving nothing but a sense of disturb- 
ance, and victuals spoiled. The inferior functions of 
life begin to move heavily. We cannot concoct our 
food with interruptions. Our chief meal, to be nutri- 
tive, must be solitary. With difficulty we can eat be- 
fore a guest ; and never understood what the relish of 
public feasting meant. Meats have no sapor, nor diges- 
tion fair play, in a crowd. The unexpected coming in 
of a visitant stops the machine.. There is a punctual 
generation who time their calls to the precise com- 
mencement of your dinner-hour — not to eat — but to 
see you eat. Our knife and fork drop instinctively, and 
we feel that we have swallowed our latest morsel. 
Others again show their genius, as we have said, in 
knocking the moment you have just sat down to a 
book. They have a peculiar compassionate sneer, with 
which they " hope that they do not interrupt your 
studies." Though they flutter off the next moment, to 
carry their impertinences to the nearest student that 
they can call their friend, the tone of the book is 
spoiled ; we shut the leaves, and, with Dante's lovers, 
read no more that day. It were well if the effect of 
intrusion were simply coextensive with its presence, 
but it mars all the good hours afterwards. These 
scratches in appearance leave an orifice that closes not 
hastily. " It is a prostitution of the bravery of friend- 
ship," says worthy Bishop Taylor, " to spend it upon 
impertinent people, who are, it may be, loads to their 
families, but can never ease my loads." This is the 
secret of their gaddings, their visits, and morning calls. 
They too have homes, which are — no homes. 



448 POPULAR FALLACIES. 



XIII. 

THAT YOU MUST LOVE ME AND LOVE MY DOG. 

Good sir, or madam — as it may be — we most 



a 



willingly embrace the offer of your friendship. We 
have long known your excellent qualities. We have 
wished to have you nearer to us ; to hold you within 
the very innermost fold of our heart. We can have 
no reserve towards a person of your open and noble 
nature. The frankness of your humor suits us ex- 
actly. We have been long looking for such a friend. 
Quick, — let us disburden our troubles into each other's 
bosom, — let us make our single joys shine by redupli- 
cation, — But y«p, 1/apy ywp I what is this confounded 
cur ? he has fastened his tooth, which is none of the 
bluntest, just in the fleshy part of my leg." 

" It is my dog, sir. You must love him for my sake. 
Here, Test — Test — Test ! " 

" But he has bitten me." 

" Ay, that he is apt to do, till you are better ac- 
quainted with him. I have had him three years. He 
never bites me." 

Yaf^ yap^ yap ! — " He is at it again." 

" O, sir, you must not kick him. He does not like 
to be kicked. I expect my dog to be treated with all 
the respect due to myself." 

" But do you always take him out with you, when 
you go a friendship-hunting ? " 

" Invariably. 'Tis the sweetest, prettiest, best-con- 
ditioned animal. I call him my test — the touchstone 
by which to try a friend. No one can properly be said 
to love me, who does not love him." 

" Excuse us, dear sir — or madam, aforesaid — if 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 449 

upon further consideration we are obliged to decline 
the otherwise invaluable offer of your friendship. We 
do not like dogs." 

" Mighty well, sir, — you know the conditions, — 
you may have worse offers. Come along, Test." 

The above dialogue is not so imaginary, but that, in 
the intercourse of life, we have had frequent occasions 
of breaking off an agreeable intimacy by reason of 
these canine appendages. They do not always come 
in the shape of dogs ; they sometimes wear the more 
plausible and human character of kinsfolk, near ac- 
quaintances, my friend's friend, his partner, his wife, 
or his children. We could never yet form a friend- 
ship, — not to speak of more delicate correspondence, — 
however much to our taste, without the intervention 
of some third anomaly, some impertinent clog affixed to 
the relation — the understood dog in the proverb. The 
good things of life are not to be had singly, but come 
to us with a mixture, — like a schoolboy's holiday, with 
a task affixed to the tail of it. What a delightful com- 
panion is , if he did not always bring his tall 

cousin with him ! He seems to grow with him ; like 
some of those double births which we remember to 
have read of with such wonder and delight in the old 
"Athenian Oracle," where Swift commenced author 
by writing Pindaric Odes (what a beginning for him !) 
upon Sir William Temple. There is the picture of 
the brother, with the little brother peeping out at his 
shoulder; a species of fraternity, which we have no 

name of kin close enough to comprehend. When 

comes, poking in his head and shoulder into your room, 
as if to feel his entry, you think, surely you have now 
got him to yourself, — what a three hours' chat we 
VOL. m. 29 



450 POPULAR FALLACIES. 

shall have ! — but ever in the haunch of him, and be- 
fore his diffident body is well disclosed in your apart- 
ment, appears the haunting shadow of the cousin, 
overpeering his modest kinsman, and sure to overlay 
the expected good talk with his insufferable procerity 
of stature, and uncorresponding dwarfishness of obser- 
vation. Misfortunes seldom come alone. 'Tis hard 
when a blessing comes accompanied. Cannot we like 
Sempronia, without sitting down to chess with her 
eternal brother ? or know Sulpicia, without knowing 
all the round of her card-playing relations ? — must my 
friend's brethren of necessity be mine also ? must we 
be hand and glove with Dick Selby the parson, or Jack 
Selby the calico-printer, because W. S., who is neither, 
but a ripe wit and a critic, has the misfortune to claim a 
common parentage with them ? Let him lay down his 
brothers ; and 'tis odds but we will cast him in a pair 
of ours (we have a superflux) to balance the conces- 
sion. Let F. H. lay down his garrulous uncle ; and 
Honorius dismiss his vapid wife, and superfluous estab- 
lishment of six boys ; things between boy and manhood 
— too ripe for play, too raw for conversation — that 
come in, impudently staring their father's old friend 
out of countenance ; and will neither aid, nor let alone, 
the conference; that we may once more meet upon 
equal terms, as we were wont to do in the disengaged 
state of bachelorhood. 

It is well if your friend, or mistress, be content with 
these canicular probations. Few young ladies but in 
this sense keep a dog. But when Rutilia hounds at 
you her tiger aunt ; or Ruspina expects you to cherish 
and fondle her viper sister, whom she has preposter- 
ously taken into her bosom, to try stinging conclusions 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 451 

upon your constancy ; thej must not complain if the 
house be rather thin of suitors. Scylla must have 
broken off many excellent matches in her time, if she 
insisted upon all, that loved her, loving her dogs also. 

An excellent story to this moral is told of Merry, of 
Delia Cruscan memory. In tender youth he loved and 
courted a modest appanage to the Opera, — in truth a 
dan(>er, — who had won him by the artless contrast 
between her manners and situation. She seemed to 
him a native violet, that had been transplanted by 
some rude accident into that exotic and artificial hot- 
bed. Nor, in truth, was she less genuine and sincere 
than she appeared to him. He wooed and won this 
flower. Only for appearance' sake, and for due honor 
to the bride's relations, she craved that she might have 
the attendance of her friends and kindred at the ap- 
proaching solemnity. The request was too amiable not 
to be conceded ; and in this solicitude for conciliating 
the good-will of mere relations, he found a presage of 
her superior attentions to himself, when the golden 
shaft should have " killed the flock of all affections 
else." The morning came ; and at the Star and 
Garter, Richmond, — the place appointed for the break- 
fasting, — accompanied with one English friend, he im- 
patiently awaited what reinforcements the bride should 
bring to grace the ceremony. A rich muster she had 
made. They came in six coaches — the whole corps 
du ballet — French, Italian, men, and women. Mon- 
sieur de B., the famous pirouetter of the day, led his 
fair spouse, but craggy, from the banks of the Seine. 
The Prima Donna had sent her excuse. But the first 
and second Buffa were there ; and Signor Sc — , and 
Signora Ch — , and Madame V — , with a countless cav- 



452 POPULAR FALLACIES. 

alcade besides of cliorusers, figurantes ! at the sight of 
whom Merry afterwards declared, that " then for the 
first time it struck him seriously, that he was about to 
marry — a dancer." But there was no help for it. 
Besides, it was her day ; these were, in fact, her friends 
and kinsfolk. The assemblage, though whimsical, was 
all very natural. But when the bride — handing out 
of the last coach a still more extraordinary figure than 
the rest — presented to him as her father — the gen- 
tleman that was to give her away — no less a person 
than Signor Delpini himself — with a sort of pride, as 
much as to say. See what I have brought to do us 
honor ! — the thought of so extraordinary a paternity 
quite overcame him ; and slipping away under some 
pretence from the bride and her motley adherents, poor 
Merry took horse from the backyard to the nearest 
sea-coast from which, shipping himself to America, he 
shortly after consoled himself with a more congenial 
match in the person of Miss Brunton ; relieved from 
his intended clown father, and a bevy of painted buffas 
for bridemaids. 

XIV. 
THAT WE SHOULD RISE WITH THE LARK. 

At what precise minute that little airy musician doifs 
his night gear, and prepares to tune up his unseason- 
able matins, we are not naturalists enough to deter- 
mine. But for a mere human gentleman — that has 
no orchestra business to call him from his warm bed 
to such preposterous exercises — we take ten, or half 
after ten, (eleven, of coiirse, during this Christmas sol- 
stice,) to be the very earliest hour at which he can 
begin to think of abandoning his pillow. To think of 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 453 

it, we say ; for to do it in earnest requires another half 
hour's good consideration. Not but there are pretty 
sunrisings, as we are told, and such Hke gauds, abroad 
in the world, in summer-time especially, some hours 
before what we have assigned ; which a gentleman may 
see, as they say, only for getting up. But having been 
tempted once or twice, in earlier life, to assist at those 
ceremonies, we confess our curiosity abated. We are 
no longer ambitious of being the sun's courtiers, to 
attend at his morning levees. We hold the good hours 
of the dawn too sacred to waste them upon such ob- 
servances ; which have in them, besides, something 
Pagan and Persic. To say truth, we never anticipated 
our usual hour, or got up with the sun (as 'tis called), 
to go a journey, or upon a foolish whole day's pleasur- 
ing, but we suiFered for it all the long hours after in 
listlessness and headaches ; Nature herself sufficiently 
declaring her sense of our presumption in aspiring to 
regulate our frail waking courses by the measures of 
that celestial and sleepless traveller. We deny not 
that there is something sprightly and vigorous, at the 
outset especially, in these break-of-day excursions. It 
is flattering to get the start of a lazy world ; to con- 
quer death by proxy in his image. But the seeds of 
sleep and mortality are in us ; and we pay usually, in 
strange qualms before night falls, the penalty of the 
unnatural inversion. Therefore, while the busy part 
of mankind are fast huddling on their clothes, are al- 
ready up and about their occupations, content to have 
swallowed their sleep by wholesale ; we choose to 
linger a-bed, and digest our dreams. It is the very 
time to recombine the wandering images, which night 
in a confused mass presented ; to snatch them from for- 



454 POPULAR FALLACIES. 

getfulness ; to shape and mould them. Some people 
have no good of their dreams. Like fast feeders, they 
gulp them too grossly, to taste them curiously. We 
love to chew the cud of a foregone vision ; to collect 
the scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over 
again, with firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal trage- 
dies ; to drag into daylight a struggling and half-van- 
ishing nightmare ; to handle and examine the terrors, 
or the airy solaces. We have too much respect for 
these spiritual communications to let them go so lightly. 
We are not so stupid, or so careless as that Imperial 
forgetter of his dreams, that we should need a seer to 
remind us of the form of them. They seem to us to 
have as much significance as our waking concerns ; 
or rather to import us more nearly, as more nearly 
we approach by years to the shadowy world, whither 
we are hastening. We have shaken hands with the 
world's business ; we have done with it ; we have dis- 
charged ourself of it. Why should we get up ? we 
have neither suit to solicit, nor affairs to manage. The 
drama has shut in upon us at the fourth act. We have 
nothing here to expect, but in a short time a sick bed, 
and a dismissal. We delight to anticipate death by 
such shadows as night affords. We are already half 
acquainted with ghosts. We were never much in the 
world. Disappointment early struck a dark veil be- 
tween us and its dazzling illusions. Our spirits showed 
gray before our hairs. The mighty changes of the 
world already appear as but the vain stuff out of which 
dramas are composed. We have asked no more of life 
than what the mimic imiages in playhouses present us 
with. Even those types have waxed fainter. Our 
clock appears to have struck. We are superannu- 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 455 

ATED. In this dearth of mundane satisfaction, we con- 
tract politic alliances with shadows. It is good to have 
friends at court. The abstracted media of dreams seem 
no ill introduction to that spiritual presence, upon 
which, in no long time, we expect to be thrown. We 
are trying to know a little of the usages of that colony ; 
to learn the language, and the faces we shall meet with 
there, that we may be the less awkward at our first 
coming among them. We willingly call a phantom 
our fellow, as knowing we shall soon be of their dark 
companionship. Therefore, we cherish dreams. We 
try to spell in them the alphabet of the invisible world ; 
and think we know already, how it shall be with us. 
Those uncouth shapes, which, while we clung to flesh 
and blood, affrighted us, have become familiar. We 
feel attenuated into their meagre essences, and have 
given the hand of half-way approach to incorporeal 
being. We once thought life to be something ; but 
it has unaccountably fallen from us before its time. 
Therefore we choose to dally with visions. The sun 
has no purposes of ours to light us to. Why should 
we get up ? 

XV. 

THAT WE SHOULD LIE DOWN WITH THE LAMB. 

We could never quite understand the philosophy of 
this arrangement, or the wisdom of our ancestors in 
sending us for instruction to these woolly bedfellows. 
A sheep, when it is dark, has nothing to do but to shut 
his silly eyes, and sleep if he can. Man found out long 
sixes, — Hail, candle-light ! without disparagement to 
sun or moon, the kindliest luminary of the three, — if 
we may not rather style thee their radiant deputy, mild 



456 POPULAR FALLACIES. 

viceroy of the moon ! — We love to read, talk, sit 
silent, eat, drink, sleep, by candle-light. They are 
everybody's sun and moon. This is our peculiar and 
household planet. Wanting it, what savage unsocial 
nights must our ancestors have spent, v^intering in 
caves and unillumined fastnesses ! They must have 
lain about and grumbled at one another in the dark. 
What repartees could have passed, when you must 
have felt about for a smile, and handled a neighbor's 
cheek to be sure that he understood it ? This accounts 
for the seriousness of the elder poetry. It has a sombre 
cast (try Hesiod or Ossian), derived from the tradition 
of those unlanterned nights. Jokes came in with 
candles. We wonder how they saw to pick up a pin, 
if they had any. How did they sup ? what a melange 
of chance carving they must have made of it I — here 
one had got a leg of a goat, when he wanted a horse's 
shoulder — there another had dipped his scooped palm 
in a kid-skin of wild honey, when he meditated right 
mare's milk. There is neither good eating nor drink- 
'ing in fresco. Who, even in these civilized times, has 
never experienced this, when at some economic table 
he has commenced dining after dusk, and waited for 
the flavor till the lights came ? The senses absolutely 
give and take reciprocally. Can you tell pork from 
veal in the dark ? or distinguish Sherris from pure 
Malaga? Take away the candle from the smoking 
man ; by the glimmering of the left ashes, he knows 
that he is still smoking, but he knows it only by 
an inference ; till the restored light, coming in aid 
of the olfactories, reveals to both senses the full 
aroma. Then how he redoubles his puffs ! how he 
burnishes ! — There is absolutely no such thing as 



POPULAR FALLACIES. ' 457 

reading but by a candle. We have tried the affecta- 
tion of a book at noonday in gardens, and in sultry 
arbors ; but it was labor thrown away. Those gay 
motes in the beam come about you, hovering and teas- 
ing, like so many coquettes, that will have you all to 
their self, and are jealous of your abstractions. By the 
midnight taper, the writer digests his meditations. By 
the same light we must approach to their perusal, if we 
would catch the flame, the odor. It is a mockery, all 
that is reported of the influential Phoebus. No true 
poem ever owed its birth to the sun's light. They are 
abstracted works — 

Things that were born, when none but the still night, 
And his dumb candle, saw his pinching throes. 

Marry, daylight — daylight might furnish the images, 
the crude material ; but for the fine shapings, the true 
turning and filing (as mine author hath it), they must 
be content to hold their inspiration of the candle. The 
mild internal light, that reveals them, like fires on the 
domestic hearth, goes out in the sunshine. Night and 
silence call out the starry fancies. Milton's Morning 
Hymn in Paradise, we would hold a good wager, was 
penned at midnight ; and Taylor's rich description of a 
sunrise smells decidedly of the taper. Even ourself, in 
these our humbler lucubrations, tune our best-measured 
cadences (Prose has her cadences) not unfrequently to 
the charm of the drowsier watchman, " blessinor the 
doors ; " or the wild sweep of winds at midnight. 
Even now a loftier speculation than we have yet at- 
tempted, courts our endeavors. We would indite 
something about the Solar System. — Betty ^ bring the 
candles. 



458 POPULAK FALLACIES. 

xvr. 

THAT A SULKY TEMPER IS A MISFORTUNE. 

We grant that it is, and a very serious one — to a 
man's friends, and to all that have to do with him ; but 
whether the condition of the man himself is so much to 
be deplored, may admit of a question. We can speak 
a little to it, being ourself but lately recovered — we 
whisper it in confidence, reader — out of a long and 
desperate fit of the sullens. Was the cure a blessing ? 
The conviction which wrought it, came too clearly to 
leave a scruple of the fanciful injuries — for they were 
mere fancies — which had provoked the humor. But 
the humor itself was too self-pleasing, while it lasted — 
we know how bare we lay ourself in the confession — 
to be abandoned all at once with the grounds of it. 
We still brood over wrongs which we know to have 

been imaginary ; and for our old acquaintance N , 

whom we find to have been a truer friend than we took 
him for, we substitute some phantom — a Caius or a 
Titius — as like him as we dare to form it, to wreak 
our yet unsatisfied resentments on. It is mortifying to 
fall at once from the pinnacle of neglect ; to forego the 
idea of having been ill-used and contumaciously treated, 
by an old friend. The first thing to aggrandize a man 
in his own conceit, is to conceive of himself as neo;- 
lected. There let him fix if he can. To undeceive 
him is to deprive him of the most tickling morsel 
within the range of self-complacency. No flattery can 
come near it. Happy is he who suspects his friend of 
an injustice ; but supremely blest, who thinks all his 
friends in a conspiracy to depress and undervalue him. 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 459 

There is a pleasure (we sing not to the profane) far 
beyond the reach of all that the world counts joy — a 
deep, enduring satisfaction in the depths, where the 
superficial seek it not, of discontent. Were we to 
recite one half of this mystery, — which we were let 
into by our late dissatisfaction, all the world would be 
in love with disrespect ; we should wear a slight for a 
bracelet, and neglects and contumacies would be the 
only matter for courtship. Unlike to that mysterious 
book in the Apocalypse, the study of this mystery is 
unpalatable only in the commencement. The first 
sting of a suspicion is grievous ; but wait — out of that 
wound, which to flesh and blood seemed so difficult, 
there is balm and honey to be extracted. Your friend 
passed you on such or such a day, — having in his com- 
pany one that you conceived worse than ambiguously 
disposed towards you, — passed you in the street with- 
out notice. To be sure he is something short-sighted ; 
and it was in your power to have accosted him. But 
facts and sane inferences are trifles to a true adept in 
the science of dissatisfaction. He must have seen you ; 

and S , who was with him, must have been the 

cause of the contempt. It galls you and well it may. 
But have patience. Go home, and make the worst of 
it, and you are a made man from this time. Shut 
yourself up, and — rejecting, as an enemy to your 
peace, every whispering suggestion that but insinuates 
there may be a mistake — reflect seriously upon the 
many lesser instances which you had begun to per- 
ceive, in proof of your Mend's disaffection towards you. 
None of them singly was much to the purpose, but the 
aggregate weight is positive ; and you have this last 



460 POPULAR FALLACIES. 

aflfront to clencli them. Thus far the process is any- 
thing but agreeable. But now to your rehef comes in 
the comparative faculty. You conjure up all the kind 
feelings you have had for your friend ; what you have 
been to him, and what you would have been to him, if 
he would have suffered you ; how you defended him in 
this or that place ; and his good name — his literary 
reputation, and so forth, was always dearer to you than 
your own ! Your heart, spite of itself, yearns towards 
him. You could weep tears of blood but for a restrain- 
ing pride. How say you ! do you not yet begin to 
apprehend a comfort? some allay of sweetness in the 
bitter waters ? Stop not here, nor penuriously cheat 
yourself of your reversions. You are on vantage 
ground. Enlarge your speculations, and take in the 
rest of your friends, as a spark kindles more sparks. 
Was there one among them, who has not to you proved 
hollow, false, slippery as water ? Begin to think that 
the relation itself is inconsistent with mortality. That 
the very idea of friendship, with its component parts, as 
honor, fidelity, steadiness, exists but in your single 
bosom. Image yourself to yourself, as the only pos- 
sible friend in a world incapable of that communion. 
Now the gloom thickens. The little star of self-love 
twinkles, that is to encourage you through deeper 
glooms than this. You are not yet at the half point of 
your elevation. You are not yet, believe me, half 
sulky enough. Adverting to the world in general, (as 
these circles in the mind will spread to infinity,) reflect 
with what strange injustice you have been treated in 
quarters where (setting gratitude and the expectation 
of friendly returns aside as chimeras) you pretended no 



POPULAR FALLACIES. 461 

claim beyond justice, the naked due of all men. Think 
the very idea of right and fit fled from the earth, or 
your breast the solitary receptacle of it, till you have 
swelled yourself into at least one hemisphere ; the other 
being the vast Arabia Stony of your friends and the 
v^orld aforesaid. To grow bigger every moment in 
your own conceit, and the world to lessen; to deify 
yourself at the expense of your species ; to judge the 
world, — this is the acme and supreme point of your 
mystery, — these the true Pleasures of Sulkiness. 
We profess no more of this grand secret than what 
ourself experimented on one rainy afternoon in the last 
week, sulking in our study. We had proceeded to the 
penultimate point, at which the true adept seldom 
stops, where the consideration of benefit forgot is about 
to merge in the meditation of general injustice — when 
a knock at the door was followed by the entrance of 
the very friend whose not seeing of us in the morning, 
(for we will now confess the case our own,) an acci- 
dental oversight, had given rise to so much agreeable 
generalization I To mortify us still more, and take 
down the whole flattering superstructure which pride 
had piled upon neglect, he had brought in his hand the 

identical S , in whose favor we had suspected him 

of the contumacy. Asseverations were needless, where 
the frank manner of them both was convictive of the 
injurious nature of the suspicion. We fancied that 
they perceived our embarrassment; but were too proud, 
01* something else, to confess to the secret of it. We 
had been but too lately in the condition of the noble 
patient in Argos : — 

Qui se credebat miros audire tragoedos. 
In vacuo Isetus sessor plausorque theatre — 



462 KEFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY. 

and could have exclaimed with equal reason against 
the friendly hands that cured us — 

Pol, me occidistis, amici, 
Non servastis, ait ; cui sic extorta voluptas, 
Et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error. 



KEFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY. 

[About the year 18 — , one R d, a respectable London merchant, 

(since dead,) stood in the pillory for some alleged fraud upon the revenue. 
Among his papers were found the following " Reflections," which we have 
obtained by favor of our friend Elia, who knew him well, and had heard 
him describe the train of his feelings upon that trying occasion almost in 
the words of the MS. Elia speaks of him as a man (with the exception 
of the peccadillo aforesaid) of singular integrity in all his private deal- 
ings, possessing great suavity of manner, with a certain turn for humor 
As our object is to present human nature under every possible circum- 
stance, we do not think that we shall sully our pages by inserting it. 
Editor.] 

SCENE, OPPOSITE THE ROYAL EXCHANGE. — TIME, TWELVE 

TO ONE, NOON. 

Ketch, my good fellow, you have a neat hand. 
Prithee, adjust this new collar to my neck gingerly. 
I am not used to these wooden cravats. There, softly, 
softly. That seems the exact point between ornament 
and strangulation. A thought looser on this side. 
Now it will do. And have a care in turning me, 
that I present my aspect due vertically. I now face 
the orient. In a quarter of an hour I shift southward 
— do you mind ? — and so on till I face the east again, 
travelling with the sun. No half points, I beseech 
you ; N. N. by W. or any such elaborate niceties. 



EEFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY. 463 

They become the shipman's card, but not this mys- 
tery. Now leave me a little to my own reflections. 

Bless us, what a company is assembled in honor of 
me ! How grand I stand here ! I never felt so sen- 
sibly before the eifect of solitude in a crowd. 1 muse 
in solemn silence upon that vast miscellaneous rabble 
in the pit there. From my private box I contemplate, 
with mingled pity and wonder, the gaping curiosity 
of those underlings. There are my Whitechapel sup- 
porters. Rosemary Lane has emptied herself of the 
very flower of her citizens to grace my show. Duke's 
place sits desolate. What is there in my face, that 
strangers should come so far from the east to gaze 
upon it ? \_nere an egg narrowly misses liim.'\ That 
offering was well meant, but not so cleanly executed. 
By the tricklings, it should not be either myrrh or 
frankincense. Spare your presents, my friends ; I 
am noways mercenary. I desire no missive tokens 
of your approbation. I am past those valentines. 
Bestow these coflins of untimely chickens upon mouths 
that water for them. Comfort your addle spouses with 
them at home, and stop the mouths of your brawling 
brats with such 011a Podridas ; they have need of 
them. [A brick is let flg-^ Disease not, I pray you, 
nor dismantle your rent and ragged tenements, to fur- 
nish me with architectural decorations, which I can 
excuse. This fragment might have stopped a flaw 
against snow comes. [-A coal fliesJ] Cinders are 
dear, gentlemen. This nubbling might have helped 
the pot boil, when your dirty cuttings from the sham- 
bles at three ha'-pence a pound shall stand at a cold 
simmer. Now, south about. Ketch. I would enjoy 
australian popularity. 



464 REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY. 

What, my friends from over the water ! Old bench- 
ers, — flies of a day, — ephemeral Romans, — wel- 
come ! Doth the sio;ht of me draw souls from limbo ? 
can it dispeople purgatory — ha ? 

What am I, or what was my father's house, that I 
should thus be set up a spectacle to gentlemen and 
others ? Why are all faces, like Persians at the sun- 
rise, bent singly on mine alone ? It was wont to be 
esteemed an ordinary visnomy, a quotidian merely. 
Doubtless, these assembled myriads discern some traits 
of nobleness, gentility, breeding, which hitherto have 
escaped the common observation ; some intimations, as 
it were, of wisdom, valor, piety, and so forth. My 
sight dazzles ; and, if I am not deceived by the too 
familiar pressure of this strange neckcloth that envel- 
ops it, my countenance gives out lambent glories. 
For some painter now to take me in the lucky point 
of expression ! — the posture so convenient, — the head 
never shifting, but standing quiescent in a sort of nat- 
ural frame. But these artisans require a westerly as- 
pect. Ketch, turn me. 

Something of St. James's air in these my new friends. 
How my prospects shift, and brighten ! Now if Sir 
Thomas Lawrence be anywhere in that group, his for- 
tune is made forever. I think I see some one taking 
out a crayon. I will compose my whole face to a 
smile, which yet shall not so predominate, but that 
gravity and gayety shall contend, as it were, — you 
understand me ? I will work up my thoughts to some 
mild rapture, — a gentle enthusiasm, — which the ar- 
tist may transfer in a manner warm to the canvas. I 
will inwardly apostrophize my tabernacle. 

Delectable mansion, hail 1 House, not made of 



KEFLECTIONS IN THE PILLOEY. 465 

every wood ! Lodging, that pays no rent ; airy and 
commodious ; wliicli, owing no window tax, art yet 
all casement, out of which men have such pleasure 
in peering and overlooking, that they will sometimes 
stand an hour together to enjoy thy prospects ! Cell, 
recluse from the vulgar ! Quiet retirement from the 
great Babel, yet affording sufficient glimpses into it ! 
Pulpit, that instructs without note or sermon-book, 
into which the preacher is inducted without tenth or 
first fr'uit ! Throne, unshared and single, that dis- 
dainest a Brentford competitor ! Honor without cor- 
rival ! Or hearest thou rather, magnificent theatre 
in which the spectator comes to see and to be seen ? 
From thy giddy heights I look down upon the common 
herd, who stand with eyes upturned as if a winged 
messenger hovered over them ; and mouths open, as 
if they expected manna. I feel, I feel, the true Epis- 
copal yearnings. Behold in me, my flock, your true 
overseer ! What though I cannot lay hands, because 
my own are laid, yet I can mutter benedictions. True 
otium cum dignitate ! Proud Pisgah eminence ! Pin- 
nacle sublime ! O Pillory, 'tis thee I sing ! Thou 
younger brother to the gallows, without his rough and 
Esau palms ; that with ineffable contempt surveyest 
beneath thee the grovelling stocks, which claims pre- 
sumptuously to be of thy great race. Let that low 
wood know, that thou art far higher born I Let that 
domicile for groundling rogues and base earth-kissing 
varlets envy thy preferment, not seldom fated to be the 
wanton baiting-house, the temporary retreat, of poet 
and of patriot. Shades of Bastwick and of Prynne 
hover over thee, — Defoe is there, and more greatly 
daring Shebbeare, — from their (little more elevated) 

YOL. III. 30 



€6^. 



466 REFLECTIONS IN THE PILLORY. 



stations they look down with recognitions. Ketch, 
turn me. 

I now veer to the north. Open your widest gates, 
thou proud Exchange of London, that I may look in as 
proudly ! Gresham's wonder, hail I I stand upon a 
level with all your kings. They, and I, from equal 
heights, with equal superciliousness, o'erlook the plod- 
ding, money-hunting tribe below; who, busied in their 
sordid speculations, scarce/elevate their eyes to notice 
your ancient or my recent grandeur. The second 
Charles smiles on me from three pedestals?* He 
closed the Exchequer ; I cheated the Excise. Equal 
our darings, equal be our lot. 

Are those the quarters ? 'tis their fatal chime. That 
the ever-winged hours would but stand still ! but I 
must descend, descend from this dream of greatness. 
Stay, stay, a little while, importunate hour-hand. A 
moment or two, and I shall walk on foot with the un- 
distinguished many. The clock speaks one. I return 
to common life. Ketch, let me out. 

* A statue of Charles 11. by the elder Cibber, adorns the front of the 
Exchange. He stands also on high, in the train of his crowned ancestors, 
in his proper order, within that building. But the merchants of London, 
in a superfoetation of loyalty, have, within a few years, caused to be 
erected another effigy of him on the gi-ound in the centre of the interior. 
We do not hear that a fourth is in contemplation. — Editor. 



THE END. 



RIVERSIDE press: H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY, PRINTERS 

.RB S '21 



LIBRARY OF CONGREbb 




014 494 843 9 



;i5^ 



iii 






